


SPN fic amnesty

by andlightplay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse of Angel Powers, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Alternate Universe - Pern, Alternate Universe - Temeraire Fusion, Animal Transformation, Curtain Fic, Demonic Possession, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, Episode: s05e04 The End, Episode: s06e09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe, Episode: s06e20 The Man Who Would Be King, Episode: s08e11 LARP and the Real Girl, Fairy Tale Retellings, First Time, Gen, Hellhounds, Kid Fic, M/M, Menstrual Sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 74,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andlightplay/pseuds/andlightplay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and bobs and unfinished snipppets of all the SPN fic I meant to write over the last four years. I find my interest in the show waning, but I feel like these fragments and idea outlines should be allowed to see the light of the internet rather than just being abandoned in a corner of my hard drive.</p><p>Each chapter is a new thing, so the tags don't all pertain to a single work. For those who wish to avoid them, the Major Character Death is in ch. 16, and the Past Non-Con tag is for ch. 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. future fic - farm

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on [tumblr](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/85232304863).

“I don’t think I can do this any more,” Sam says, sitting down on the edge of the motel bed and rubbing his hands across his face. “I just- I need a break, Dean, and if I do then you sure as hell do too.”

It’s probably a mark of something drastic that Dean just shrugs, drops his duffel on the table and sinks into the chair. “Okay, so...what then? What’re we gonna do now? ‘S not like we’ve got any marketable skills.”

Sam laughs, tired and maybe a little hysterical. “Well that’s the age-old question, isn’t it? What do you do once you’ve saved the world?”

“Three times,” Dean adds, holding up his fingers for emphasis.

“Can you not simply resume more civilian lives?” Cas asks from where he’s leaning against the bathroom door. “You’ve both done so before.”

“That was...” Sam starts, running a hand through his hair. “That’s was a lifetime ago, Cas. I don’t even feel like I’m in the same _universe_  as I was then.”

“Anyway, what about you?” Dean points out, avoiding the question. They all know he can’t go back anyway. “You need us to stick with you, dude. what the hell would you do on your own?”

Cas shrugs. “Someone needs to take up Bobby’s role as information collator. I know a great deal about most of the things you hunt.”

“Guess someone needs to,” Dean agrees after a moment of processing that. “So what, you want us to install you up in Rufus’s cabin and leave you there to ‘collate’?”

“If that would enable to you pursue the lives you want to,” Cas says evenly, stare as intent as ever. “Of course, I would rather be with you.” He switches his eyes to Sam, including him too. “Loneliness is not an experience I enjoy.”

“He’s right, somebody needs to take over all Bobby’s shit,” Sam says. “Not just the info gathering, the FBI faking and stuff, and the hooking hunters up with stuff they need.”

“And you think _we_ should do that?” Dean asks skeptically, and Sam shrugs one shoulder, earnest face on full power.

“Like I said, someone’s gotta. And with three of us it won’t be so time-consuming, we can actually have a life too, maybe even get back into it after a while, local stuff, like Bobby used to. I mean, Frank taught you some computer stuff, right?”

“Well yeah, but I’m not suddenly some magic hacker or anything.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be good for like, falsifying records, IDs, whatever we need,” Sam says, getting animated now. “We’ve still got some of Bobby’s books and there's still all the Campbell stuff, we could rebuild his library, get Dad’s journal properly organized, get a proper hunter network up...” He turns to Cas. “Sounds good, right Cas?”

Cas nods slowly, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “It does.”

*

They ditch the old Mustang they’ve been using just outside of the town and hike the rest of the way to Rufus’s, bags slung over their shoulders. It’s just turning to evening when they get there, the sun dipping below the treetops and lighting them up gold, gilding the cabin in rich light and shadows. Dean immediately makes a beeline for the tarpaulin-covered Impala sitting majestically in the driveway, bags abandoned a few feet from the porch.

“Hey sweetheart,” he croons, peeling the tarp off like a lover’s clothes. “You miss me? Cause baby I’m telling you, I fuckin’ missed you.”

“Let’s give them a moment alone,” Sam stage-whispers to Cas, dumping his bags on the porch as he gets the keys out and unlocks the door, and Cas follows him in looking vaguely bemused, glancing back every few steps. “Don’t forget your bags, Dean!” Sam adds, sticking his head back out the door, and gets a scoffing hand in reply.

“I’m taking her out for a spin,” Dean announces when he finally comes bouncing indoors, a bag over each shoulder and bumping his legs. He’s grinning, happier than Sam’s seen him for a long time, everything in his world back to rights, and Sam can only smile back. “You coming?”

“I wanna unpack, maybe get some supper going,” Sam says, because it’s mostly true, and watches Dean roll his eyes at him and turn his grin on Cas. Cas follows him out to the car like he’s followed him everywhere, and Sam amuses himself imagining their sunlit drive, nothing but the rumble of the engine and the slide of the road under the wheels and Dean’s fingers tapping happy little drumbeats on the wheel.

The Impala purrs back into the driveway an hour or so later when it’s closer to full dark, everything twilit and peaceful, and Dean and Cas come meandering back up to the house together, bumping shoulders every few steps. Sam’s found some chunky soup and rice in the pantry and they eat together on chipped and mismatched plates, Dean’s delight infectious.

Some part of Sam still wants to baulk, to protest that nothing should be this good, this easy, but the truth is, they’re _way_  overdue for all of this. The leviathans are gone, the apocalypse is off the cards, nothing and no one is out to get them and the three of them are still here; broken and battered and fucked up, yeah, but here.

*

the next morning Sam would have gone out to the car and found a piece of paper with Bobby's loopy scrawl on it that Dean missed in all his excitement about having his baby back. it reminds them that, after the thing where his house burned down and the leviathans really seem to have it in for him, the Winchesters are the sole beneficiaries of his estate. with the insurance money from the fire - which Jody helps them get by fudging the suspicious details, cause of _course_ the town drunk with a house was full of demonology books and obscure religious texts has an iron-clad panic room in his basement, crazy son-of-a-bitch - and the money they get from eventually selling Rufus' place, they buy a small little run-down farm.

it's not much, just a house and a few barns and a couple of paddocks, but it makes Sam and Cas so all shiny-eyed and Dean and Amelia are okay with whatever makes them happy. they slowly fix it all up and one outbuilding become a garage and another a little surgery for Amelia, and then the third becomes an actual barn because they sort of end up with three or four semi-feral rescue cats, four dogs (including Riot) plus those that half-way house there on their way to better homes, half a dozen chickens, four angry geese, two rescue donkeys, a giant old horse who thinks he's a pony, and three goats that for some reason Cas really loves.

Dean oversaw the fixing up of the house and the barns, and the animals keep coming cause Sam's friend Muriel is a crazy bleeding-heart rescue worker and they can't say no to her. Also there are bees (Dean will have nothing to do with them, thank you very much, but Cas loves them and Sam thaws fast), and they sort of haphazardly grow a lot of their own fruit and veg (there are a lot of failed pie experiments as they learn to cook real food, but fortunately it's not like they're gonna run out of ingredients). There are herbs in the sun room, because Sam is apparently a giant girl, but it actually makes it smell really nice, all earthy and sharp, and there are shelves of books in there and it's where the dogs and occasionally cats generally hang out during the day and Dean secretly loves it a lot. His approach to horticulture is basically "chuck on some manure and leave everything until it starts either producing a useful crop or killing other plants", but whatever, it seems to be working. The few weeks in the summer where Sam can literally go outside, pick his salad and eat it make it all worthwhile.

*

AND THEN there was gonna be a little future fic set about 10 years later: 

*

Adelaide fucking loves night driving. It's quiet, it's dark, the trees on either side of her are like something out of a fairytale, all bare branches in wrought-gothic patterns, and speckled inside and around the patterns they make are the stars, the moon slipping and sliding in and out of sight ahead and to her left.

She's full of good food, her dad's pie is sitting on the back seat along with a fuckton of other leftovers and making the car smell like family and home, and she's got good music blasting through the car that she can sing along to as loudly as she likes without fear of disapproving looks every time she slips on censoring the swears.

A few more hours of this and she'll be home, wrapped in a comforter that smells of mom's laundry soap and still with three days free before classes start again.

The smooth hush-hush of the wheels falters, stutters and rattles to a stop.

"You are fucking kidding me. No." Adelaide says disbelievingly. " _No_ , you are not allowed to do this, come _on_ , seriously, please-" she twists the ignition (okay, maybe a little hard, but _seriously_ ) and the car makes what is unmistakably a death-rattle and then stubbornly refuses to do anything else. "Mother _fucker_. Now what the fuck do I do?"

She takes a look around, but it doesn't matter; whichever way she turns, it's trees all the way down. Oh sure, it was cool when she was actually _moving_ , but now she's stuck in the fucking sticks at like one in the morning on the day after Thanksgiving.

Fuck fuck _fuck_.

She considers just huddling up in the car for the rest of the night, but some half-remembered Real Life Survival! memory tells her that would be dumb as hell, because cars are metal and when the engine isn't running they kind of fail spectacularly at retaining heat.

Okay then.

She grabs for her coat in the passenger seat. She's not going far, but there was a town about ten minutes back, so maybe there's some hermit living out here who needs to have some measure of civilization close enough to give them access to like, toilet paper and shit.

It's _fucking cold_ outside, and she slams the door to keep the heat in the car for as long as possible, then shoves her hands into her pockets and starts walking, keys in one fist just in case some crazy hick turns up and can't be persuaded to help her first.

It _is_ nice out here, in an ice queen, haunted forest kind of way, and she half expects to hear owls like in the movies, or see red eyes between the branches. But there's nothing, just the steady cold of the November night gradually eating into her legs until she feels like she's walking on popsicles, that if she falls over her the front of her legs will crumble into icy mush like a dropped ice cream.

She almost misses the turning in her preoccupation with whether anyone's ever had half their legs amputated from frostbite, but the absence of tree-shadows on her left finally registers and she squints down it. That's definitely a house at the end, and the drive is wide and solid-packed dirt, ruts snaking outwards where cars have driven up and down it from the road.

They might be crazy serial killers, but at this point as long as their house is warm they can skin her as much as they like.

She's not too far down before she realises it's more like a farm than just a house, and the likelihood of serial killing reduces significantly. The drive is edged with wooden fence posts, and little shelters dot the paddocks she passes. It's way too small to be a proper farm, like one where they raise stuff for food, but there's at least four separate fields and maybe even a pond. The animals are obviously asleep, but a bird rustles its wings somewhere behind her and something small slinks across in front of her that she's pretty sure was a cat.

She just has time to note that the road branches at the house, splitting off towards a bigish barn off to the right and looping left and away past the nearest field to another cluster of outbuildings, and then the house lights are coming on.

The door opens, spilling light out towards her like a beacon, and a man hurries out onto the porch, followed by something small and fast and four-legged that she identifies as a dog after a second when a bigger one follows it; he calls them to heel with a quick _Hey_ and a click of his fingers. "Are you alright?" he calls, voice rough like he smokes several packs a day or something, and she clears her throat before she answers.

"Um yeah, I- my car died on me and I-"

"That is unfortunate, though you’ve come to the right place for assistance," he says, coming down the steps to meet her, and the dogs apparently take it as permission and come scuffling after him. He's backlit by the warm glow of the house lights like some kind of angel, hair messy and eyes warm as he watches her crouch to say hello to the dogs, which are snuffling enthusiastically at her feet. "Please, come in."

"Thank you."

He's tall, and follows her at a respectful distance as she navigates the steps in the dark and finally makes it through the door, which he closes behind her. The staircase to the right creaks under the weight of a second man and a third dog, and for a second she wonders if she's miscalculated here because he's just as tall and broad-shouldered as the first and something about the way he moves screams 'could kill you in a heartbeat', amplified by the battered boots he's wearing and the dog skittering down the stairs behind him, black and wolf-like. Both men have light beards, but the first one manages to make it look hippyish while the second’s only makes him look more military, glinting silver like his hair. He snaps his fingers, and all three dogs promptly sit down where they are, the black one at his side and the other two (now revealed in the light to be some kind of fluffy chihuahua mix and a cheerful, floppy-eared spaniel-beagle cross) a few feet away.

His eyes flick over her, assessing, and then he kind of...relaxes and smiles at her, eyes crinkling. And okay, so he's maybe not gonna make her drop and give him twenty or handcuff her to the radiator or something after all. The smile becomes a concerned frown, and he looks past her at the first guy. "Cas, the poor kid's shaking. Get her a blanket, jeez. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"A-Adelaide. Mackay. My car died on me, and your road was the only one..."

"Hey, it's alright Adelaide. We don't bite, and neither do they," and he gestures to the dogs. "We do, however, fix cars." There's that smile again, his eyes flicking behind her, and there are footsteps that prompt her to turn just in time to take a neatly-folded knitted blanket from the other guy, 'Cas'. Unfolded, it's got Stitch on it and a bright Hawaiian backdrop, and when she burrito's herself into it it's soft and warm, if faintly scented with dog.

When she's murmured her thanks and they've both waved her off, the guy continues. "I'm Dean, and that's Cas, and you probably don't believe me because we're just two crazy guys with too many dogs, but the building you probably saw out there is my garage."

"You seriously do fix cars?" It's out before she can think to filter herself, and she winces at the rudeness of it, but Dean just laughs, low and genuine.

"I seriously do. Where'd you say yours was, anyway? I'll get it off the road and into storage for the night."

"Oh god, I didn't even think- and there’s food in the back, Thanksgiving leftovers-"

"'S'okay sweetheart, this is basically the ass-end of nowhere this time of night, your car'll be fine, but..." and he spreads his hands, "better safe than sorry, huh?"

"Yeah. Uh, it's a right out your drive, it took me maybe fifteen minutes to walk? It's green, a '15 Chevy hybrid."

Dean's lips twitch. "Saving the planet, huh? At least it's a Chevy, I guess." He heads for the front door, then pauses. "You want a hot chocolate or something? We have tea too, if that's more your thing - Cas'll show you."

"I don't want to put you to any trouble," Adelaide says dutifully, even though hot chocolate sounds amazing right now, and Dean snorts.

"No trouble, Cas can manage a hot chocolate. Right, Cas?"

"If that's what you'd like," Cas says, offering her the choice, and Adelaide nods gratefully. Dean slips out the door, and Cas gestures in front of her. "The kitchen's straight ahead."

The kitchen is everything her father probably dreams about, stone floor and wooden cupboards and aga and all. Cas waves her to a seat at the breakfast bar as he collects saucepans and milk and cream and chocolate drops, and she takes the opportunity to glance around. There are alphabet magnets and kid's drawings on the fridge, six scribbled pink figures and crowds of four-legged ones. There are what look like herbs on the window ledges over some kind of reading nook, pans and utensils hanging from the ceiling, and a highchair at the end of the breakfast bar, covered in smiling cartoons. There's also a massive wooden table behind her that looks like it would need a crane to move, with wooden chairs scattered around it covered in mismatched cushions.

And of course, there are the dogs, the original two crowding round her again and joined by another, who slips in round the half-open door. The black one, denied Dean’s company, had snuffled Adelaide's offered hand then withdrawn to go lie between the aga and the door, apparently waiting for him to come back. "So how'd you end up with so many dogs?" she asks finally, when the silence creeps towards awkward, and Cas glances over at her, mouth tugging up at the dogs' antics.

"It wasn’t intentional," he says, stirring the milk and cream together slow and steady in a looping figure of eight. "Dean and I share the house with his brother Sam and his wife, Amelia, and they already had Riot," and he nods at the newcomer, a grizzled collie whose head is on Adelaide's thigh, "then we acquired Fergal because no one else wanted him," the spaniel-mix leaning against her knee, tail thumping against the leg of the stool next to her and an empty food bowl in his mouth, "then Pixie, for Beth, my niece," the adorable chihuahua/puffball mix up on her hind legs licking at Adelaide's extended fingers, "and finally Mariah," and he dips his head towards the black one, who lifts her head at her name. Her eyes are a blank milky white.

"Oh, she’s blind."

Cas nods, now stirring in the chocolate. "And she can be extremely possessive of people. Fergal, as you may have noticed, enjoys bringing people presents, and is too old to be considered an ideal pet; Pixie is...extremely excitable, and sometimes that leads to her chewing things. But we have a...soft spot for the unwanted, so we took them."

"That's...really sweet of you."

"It's the same with the rest of the animals," Cas continues, lighter now, pouring the hot chocolate into a tall mug for her. It's pink, with white patterns threading through it.. "Sam has a friend, Muriel, and she regularly comes across animals in need of a home. Sam is unable to say no to her." He passes her the mug and perches on the stool opposite her, folding his hands on the surface. Fergal shuffles over and offers him the bowl, and Cas takes it with a quiet thank you and a brief stroke of the dog’s ears.

“So what, you have like, a farm-come-garage? That’s like, fixing animals _and_ machines, all in one place.”

“Yes,” Cas agrees, one hand still smoothing over Fergal’s ears. “Amelia is a vet, so she has a clinic here, and Dean fixes cars and other mechanical problems. As I said, it’s fortunate you found us; As you may have inferred, we're in the business of helping those who need it. I doubt the problem is too severe, and Dean's a good mechanic; you'll most likely be able to continue on your way by tomorrow evening. I hope there’s nowhere important you need to be?"

Adelaide shrugs. “Nah, just college. Classes don’t start ‘til Monday though.” She takes a sip of the hot chocolate. "Oh my  _god_." It's rich and thick and sweet without being sickening, and it coats her tongue and warms her throat as it flows down to her stomach.

"Amelia's family recipe," Cas says, and she closes her eyes and savours it, the aftertaste lingering in her mouth.

She's almost finished by the time Mariah's ears prick up and Cas turns towards the door, the sound of the front door opening coming a second or two later. There's the cut-off jingle of keys hitting a bowl, and then footsteps down the hall and Dean appears, Adelaide’s various left-overs balanced in one arm. "Oh man, it smells amazing in here, you save any for me? It is freakin' _cold_ out there, no damn wonder you were shivering, Adelaide. Your car's fine by the way, it's in the shop. Haven't got much to do right now, so assuming it's not anything weird you should be off again tomorrow." He offloads everything into the fridge, shuffling some stuff around to make it fit, then shrugs off his jacket and tucks his fingers behind Mariah's ears where she’s trotted over to greet him. "Hey sweetheart, I promise I was only out for fifteen minutes, nothin’ to worry about."

Cas passes him another mug, and Dean nods his thanks and settles back against the counter with an exaggerated sigh, Mariah at his side with her head leaning against his hip. His first sip makes him groan theatrically, whole body loosening. “Aw yeah, that’s the stuff. ‘S like crack, right Adelaide?” He opens his eyes enough to wink at her, and across from her Cas rolls his eyes, mouth twitching.

"Yeah, it’s... _really_ good. Cas said your sister-in-law makes it?"

“Yeah, Amelia says she learned it from her grandma and it’s an old family recipe, even though we keep telling her if she sold it she’d make millions.”

“Cas was uh, also telling me how you got stuck with so many dogs.”

"Yeah, we’re a regular Doctor Dolittles now. If you’d told me ten years ago I’d be ending up on a farm with four dogs and a bunch of other animals I’d- well, I’d have laughed. A lot.” He and Cas exchange a quick look. “But yeah, we found this place, bought it and did it up all pretty, and then someone says 'Hey, you ever thought of keeping chickens?' and it was all downhill from there." This time he and Cas share a smile. "Next thing you know we've got horses and geese and freaking  _bees_ and Muriel turning up all 'I've got this friggin'...bison with three legs, you got room for one more?'"

Adelaide huffs a laugh. "You don't _actually_ have a bison though, right?" she asks, and Dean shakes his head, amused.

"I'm just waitin' though. We've got everything else."

Adelaide grins, then covers her yawn with one hand. Dean swigs back the rest of his chocolate in one and hums agreeably, wiping over his mouth with one hand. "We haven't got a spare room made up, but you can have the couch if you're okay with that?"

"I could sleep right here, so yeah. Seriously, this is so kind of you, I can't believe-"

"Hey," Dean says, gruff, "we're just being decent human beings, Adelaide. We're- we like helping people, if we can. And frankly, we could use the good karma."

Definitely ex-military - and maybe Cas was something too, since there’s definitely history there. Dean smiles at her though, a little tireder and shadowed that before but taking some of the bleakness out of his words, and she smiles back. Her Aunt Ellie was out in the Middle East until '11 when she lost half her leg, and she gets that it's a thing that has to be talked about, but at the same time can't be dwelt on or treated too carefully or it becomes a black hole you can't escape.

She follows him and the dogs back down the hall and to the right, finding a small lounge full of plush couches and kid's toys, an aquarium against one wall and a couple of shelves of kids' books on the other. The TV is huge and the coffee table is covered in books, the topmost open and apparently about dinosaurs. There are dog baskets by the door that Fergal collapses into with a heavy sigh, and when Dean tells her to pick a couch Pixie jumps up with her.

"You can shove her off, it's fine," Dean tells her, but she shakes her head, enjoying the little warm weight against her hip, and he shrugs, eyes crinkling. "Your funeral. She’s not a great sleeper, so when you get sick of her just tell her 'Off' and she'll go."

"Good night, Adelaide," Cas adds formally as they leave, and she answers instinctively as one of them flicks off the light.

She listens to their footsteps going up the stairs, the faint sounds of them talking low and discarding their shoes with soft thumps, and then it's quiet but for the breathing of the two dogs with her, the burbling of the fish tank and her own thoughts. Her mouth still tastes of chocolate, and Pixie’s a welcome spot of heat in the dark, and despite the unfamiliar house and the still-vaguely possible threat of serial killers or this all being a dream, she falls asleep.

*

she would have been woken early the next morning by Amelia letting the dogs out, and then actually got up later to find Sam and the kids in the kitchen - Beth is about 5 and sturdily self-confident, JJ (James John) is not yet 2 and a little shy; both have short, curly dark hair because Beth cut hers off one day for some reason or another and now gets annoyed when all she can do with it is stick clips in it, so she makes sure she wears about twenty at any one time. Adelaide helps them with chores like caring for the animals while she waits for her car to be fixed, then leaves them, stopping for gas in the town and getting sagely told that she couldn't have done better than stay at the Winchester place.


	2. Hogwarts!verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also posted on [tumblr](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/85835241888).

“Okay, Deano,” John Winchester said, squeezing his son’s shoulder, “this is it. You’ll be fine.”

Dean squared his shoulders. “Yeah,” he said, grateful that his voice didn’t squeak despite his dry throat. “Bye Dad.” John’s other arm wrapped over his shoulder, pulling him close for a second then releasing him. Dean turned to his little brother, who was watching him with wide eyes. “Bye Sammy.” Sam didn’t say anything but he clung tight, face against Dean’s shoulder. “Hey, two more years,” Dean whispered, and Sam nodded against him and pulled away, blinking hard.

“Send us an owl to let us know what house you’re in,” John said, clapping a hand to Dean’s shoulder, and Dean nodded, not quite trusting himself to speak, and pushed the trolley forward.

The brick wall melted away and instead he was facing a platform bustling with people, loud with voices and hoots and meows and wreathed in steam from the huge red train waiting to leave. Everyone seemed to know where they were going and what they were doing and to have family around them, and Dean bit back the brief surge of resentment that his dad was a Muggle and couldn’t be here, and the familiar sting of grief that his mom couldn’t see him now, and headed on up the platform, trolley wheels rattling.

He had to abandon it at several points to hop up onto the train and check to see whether there was an empty compartment, but eventually he found one and dragged his stuff up to stow away, grateful that he didn’t have to worry about finding somewhere to put a pet too. The big clock on the wall said he still had ten minutes to wait, so he settled back in the seat nearest the window to people-watch.

“Hey - is this seat taken?” asked a voice, and Dean turned to find a kid with a ridiculous mullet leaning round the door.

“Nah, help yourself.”

“Cool,” the boy said, and disappeared, reappearing a few moments later with a loud scraping noise as he dragged his trunk over to the the storage area.

“You wanna hand?” Dean asked, watching him struggle, and the kid grinned and shoved his hair out of his eyes.

“Please.” Together they wrestled his trunk on top of Dean’s, then both flopped down in the seats. “I’m Ash,” the boy said after a second. “Ash Blishwick.”

“Dean Winchester.”

“You’re American,” Ash said curiously, and Dean nodded.

“Yeah, we came over here when I was little.” He left it at that and Ash nodded. ‘When I was little’ meant ‘after the Second War’, and everyone knew you didn’t pry.

“Cool, cool.” The train whistled, loud and shrill, and another billow of steam stole across the platform and spilled past the window. The stragglers lunged for the train, and the conductor appeared further down the platform, closing the doors with a series of thunks. The train whistled again, engine picking up, and the carriage shuddered and inched forward. Outside the window, a witch with Ash’s hair (though not, thankfully, in the same style) waved cheerfully, and next to her a wizard with a close-cropped beard and crinkled eyes did the same. Ash waved back, grinning, and leaned against the glass to watch as the train accelerated and they disappeared from view.

“Your parents not there?” he asked, settling back into his seat, and Dean shook his head.

“Dad’s a Muggle, so he can’t get through.”

“Tough break, man,” Ash said sympathetically, then reached into his pocket. “So hey, d’you collect chocolate frog cards?”

*

The journey up north was a lot pleasanter than Dean had thought it would be with Ash there to distract him. They bought a bunch of sweets off the food witch to supplement their packed lunches and played exploding snap for the new chocolate frog cards, leaving Ash with smudges across his forehead and Dean with the tip of his nose burnt pink.

Hogsmeade station was lit bright and welcoming when they pulled in, and as they got off onto the platform, Dean glad they didn’t have to haul their trunks off again with them this time, a voice rang out. “Firs’ years, come this way! Over here please, firs’ years!”

A lantern was hanging above the crowd at the end of the platform - and then they got closer and Dean saw that no, it wasn’t hanging, it was held in a hand almost the size of his torso, and the patch of darkness he’d been thinking was a tree was actually the head of a man, hair tangled like a crown of leaves. Dean barely came up to his waist, and he was pretty sure he could have used one of the guy’s boots as a sleeping bag. This had to be Rubeus Hagrid; half-giant, hero of the Battle of Hogwarts and one of Harry Potter’s best friends.

“Alrigh’, is that all of yeh?” Hagrid called. “Okay then, follow me!” He lead them off down a steep, narrow little path, actual trees pressing in on each side of them and earth soft under their feet. They walked for maybe ten minutes, with the other kids around him chatting excitedly but quietly, like they didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere, before Hagrid spoke again.

“And this here, round the bend, is your firs’ sight o’ Hogwarts.” If it were possible to flourish with just words, that’s what he did, the pride in his voice humming like a harmony, but then the path opened up ahead of Dean, spreading suddenly into a wide vista and revealing the castle, and he understood.

Hogwarts was perched comfortably on top of the mountain on the other side of the lake which lapped at the shore a few feet away, the water further out reflecting it like a mirror. The castle’s windows were all lit gold, warm and inviting, from the highest tower to the lowest floor, and behind it the sky was a clear, deep blue, the stars spread across it in glittering swathes. This was the place Harry Potter and so many others had loved much they’d laid down their lives in defense of it, the place they had called home and meant it, the place that even Voldemort had felt a deep connection to. Here, in the darkness, you’d never know it had been besieged and laid waste to, burned and broken, the towers toppled and the walls blasted open, and it looked as incredible and bewitching as it must have done when Harry had first seen it.

“Ain’t she a beauty,” Hagrid sighed beside them, then cleared his throat and continued, louder and stronger: “Right, into the boats with yeh, but no more’n four to a boat.”

Dean headed for the first boat he saw, and got there at the same time as a blonde girl, who grinned at him and clambered in before he had the chance. “Guess we’ll find another one,” he muttered to Ash, but all the boats around them were already claimed and Hagrid was carefully folding his bulk into his own boat, making it roll alarmingly.

“We can share, you know,” the girl said, eyebrows raised, and Dean exchanged a glance with Ash and clambered aboard.

“Everyone in?” Hagrid called, and there were murmurs of assent. “Alrigh’ then - forward!”

The boats glided silently forward, the hushed murmur of their passage through the water the only sound, all the students now reverently silent. They were going pretty fast actually, Dean thought, watching the water slide past like silk, breaking the reflection of the castle as they got closer and closer to it, the rockface looming up in front of them, and then Hagrid called, “Watch your heads!” and Dean felt tendrils of ivy slithering over his shoulders. Everything went black, the stars cut off and the only sound the whisper of the water as they moved, and then there was light up ahead and a dimly-lit harbour came into view, made of natural rock outcroppings and bordered with a thin pebble beach. The boats drew up to the shore and they all got out, crunchily following Hagrid and his light into the gaping entrance to a sloping tunnel and wondering where they were going to come out.

A circle of lighter darkness opened up ahead, the stars glimmering at them like a welcome, and then they were out and the stone under their feet gave way to springy grass and the castle towering above them, huge and unbowed, and most of them were craning their heads back to stare as they went up the stone steps and Hagrid raised a fist the size of Dean’s head and knocked three times on the thick oak doors.

They swung open almost before he’d finished, but in the face of all this epicness the sight of the wizard in front of them almost made Dean snicker. He was tiny, almost as small to Dean as Dean was to Hagrid, and both his hair and beard were white and fluffy, like they were made of cotton wool and he was a half-scale Father Christmas impersonator. What stopped Dean from laughing was that he knew this was Professor Flitwick, the Charms master, another veteran of the Battle of Hogwarts and a very powerful wizard.

“The firs’ years, Professor Flitwick,” Hagrid said formally, and Professor Flitwick nodded.

“Thank you Hagrid. Follow me, please.” His voice was high and kind of squeaked, and okay, it kind of sounded like those old Mickey Mouse cartoons, but Dean managed not to laugh and they all trooped after him into the Entrance Hall, which was lit old-style by flaming torches on the walls that reflected faintly back in the polished marble of the epic staircase that swept up and away in front of them. Hagrid followed them in and slipped in through the door on their right, momentarily releasing the chatter and babble of hundreds of older students in the Great Hall. Professor Flitwick led them the opposite way though, into a small chamber where they all had to cluster together to fit, and cleared his throat.

“Welcome to Hogwarts! The Sorting ceremony will begin shortly, after which I assure you you will be allowed to eat-” a spatter of nervous laughter “-but first you need to know which table you will be eating at! The Sorting is very important, because the house you are put into will become your family within Hogwarts and everything you will do while you are here will be with the rest of your house - you sleep in the house dormitory, relax in the house common room and take lessons with the rest of your house year group. The houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, and each has it’s own merits and is no better or worse than another. House points are earned by good behaviour and taken away in the case of bad behaviour, with the overall score determining the winner of the House Cup for the year. As the Sorting will take place in front of the rest of the school, you may want to smarten up in the next few minutes; I will return shortly!”

Dean took a deep breath, then another. Beside him, Ash was fiddling absently with his hair and rocking from foot to foot, and around them the other kids were murmuring and twitching, half nervous and half impatient. Professor Flitwick was back way sooner than Dean wanted him to be, and then they were once again being led, across the Entrance Hall with the staircase yawning above them and through the door into the Great Hall.

The conversations of the other students picked up as they entered, and Dean tried to look at nothing but the girl in front of him as they filed between the tables, laid with golden plates and cutlery which reflected the light. The ceiling above them was dotted with stars, and between it and the tables hovered banks of candles, their soft light warming the room. They came to a halt facing the teachers, Dean skipping his eyes along them and naming them in his head, trying to ignore the feel of hundreds of eyes boring into his back; Hagrid, looking like he was in a dollhouse; Professor Sprout, her hair coming loose from under her hat; Professor Trelawney, glasses and beaded necklaces reflecting the candlelight; Professor McGonagall, right in the middle, sleek silver hair shining and watching them with polite but sharp eyes.

The room fell suddenly silent, and Dean wrenched his attention back to the front, where Professor Flitwick had stood back from the tattered, frayed and disheveled-looking hat he’d placed gently on a small stool. The hat seemed to draw itself up, and then a rip near the top opened up like a mouth and the hat began to sing. Dean couldn’t honestly remember _what_ it sang, far too relieved to have the rest of the school’s attention off him for a moment, but he knew it involved talking about how awesome each of the houses were and almost managed to sell him on Slytherin, and then it stopped and the eyes were back on them and Professor Flitwick stepped forward.

“When I call your name, you will sit on the stool and place the hat on your head while you are Sorted, then remove it and go to your assigned table,” he said, flicking his eyes up to them and smiling encouragingly. “Avery, Nicholas!”

A gangly kid edged out of line and up to the stool and Dean tuned out; “Barnes, Pamela” turned out to be the girl in front of him though, which snapped him back, dark haired and confident as she got Sorted into Gryffindor. Ash was next, looking remarkably calm, if kind of pale, and ended up in Hufflepuff, shoulders slumping in relief and grinning wide. "Bradbury, Charlotte" was also a Hufflepuff, but “Braedon, Lisa” went to Gryffindor, as did “Harvelle, Joanna” a little later, the blonde who’d beaten him and Ash to the boat.

Dean couldn’t tell whether his legs were wobbly from hunger or nerves as “Novak, Castiel” pulled the hat off his tousled head and headed over to the Slytherin table, several girls leaning down to congratulate him. Dean didn’t see what was so special about the guy - he looked like he hadn’t brushed his hair for a good few weeks and he was kind of pale and skinny, but whatever. A few minutes later Balthazar Reynard also went to Slytherin, settling in next to the Novak kid and elbowing him cheerfully in the ribs, and then there was only a handful of them left to be Sorted.

“Winchester, Dean,” squeaked Professor Flitwick, and Dean made his legs work and walked forward, picking up the hat and putting it on and sitting down on the hard stool.

“Dean Winchester,” buzzed a voice in his ear, and Dean fought down the urge to nod or answer out loud. “Hmm, yes, I see...not a bad brain, no exceptional ambitions but a _lot_ of family loyalty, and a decent amount of courage, especially where they’re concerned. Interesting. Hufflepuff would do you quite nicely, I think, but you aren’t so sure, are you?” Dean thought briefly of all the famous Aurors who’d been in Gryffindor; thought of his father, locked away in his study poring over their mother’s old school books and those he was gradually accumulating on the Dark Forces and the two Wizarding Wars. “Well, yes,” the hat agreed, “and you’re not wrong, you’d do perfectly well in Gryffindor, I just think Hufflepuff is a better fit. I will, of course, put you there if you wish, but Gryffindor is hardly the only house to produce great witches and wizards, and that is a rather silly thing to base your choice off. Yes? Well then, off you go to HUFFLEPUFF!”

Dean stood and took the hat off, feeling vaguely like an imposter as he took the spare place at the Hufflepuff table, though the feeling quickly dissipated under the nods and smiles of his new fellows and Ash’s grin from a few seats down. Dad wouldn't mind; he was too busy being glad Dean got to go to Hogwarts at all.

Bernard Yaxley went to Slytherin, and then it was over; Professor Flitwick rolled up the list, picked up the hat and stool and carried them away, and Professor McGonagall stood up. “I find it’s never wise to give long speeches before dinner,” she said, to a quiet hum of agreement, “so I will merely say: enjoy.”

Everyone clapped and whooped, and then she sat down and suddenly the tables were full, every available space covered in food and even the _smell_ making Dean’s mouth water and stomach rumble. Everyone else was just grabbing for whatever was in reach so he joined in, claiming two chicken legs, a pork chop and a tumble of buttery new potatoes, followed by a heap of minted peas and a pile of thinly-cut carrots and slathering everything with gravy.

It was all delicious; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something this good. His dad was a perfectly capable cook, but he never bothered to go all-out like this. Dean helped himself to seconds and listened to the babble of chatter all around him.

“You should leave some room for pudding,” Charlotte Bradbury said across from him, amused, and Dean hastily swallowed his mouthful.

“Don’t worry, I am.”

“Don’t you get fed at home?” she teased, and Dean knew she was joking but it still made something spike in his stomach.

“Why do you care?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Hey, chill Winchester, I’m just asking. Sorry.”

Dean nodded shortly but they didn’t talk again. Dessert was, incredibly, even better than the main course had been, mostly due to the huge cherry pie that appeared right in front of him and the blueberry one Ash passed him from further down the table. He managed third helpings of both, even though it felt like his stomach might explode, then leaned back in his chair and listened to the lazy chatter of the other students and the occasional clink of utensils.

Everything died down when Professor McGonagall stood up again. “Firstly,” she said, looking round at all of them, “I must of course say welcome to our new students and welcome back to the old. I trust your summers were enjoyable, and I hope that you come back now ready and willing to learn all that we have to teach you. First-years, you should know that the Forbidden Forest is, surprising as it may be, forbidden to all students, that no magic is allowed in the corridors, and that the list of banned items is, as usual, pinned to Mr Flich’s office door and continues along the wall beside it. Any student wishing to play on their house Quidditch team should give their name to their Head of House, who will pass it on to the Quidditch Captain before the house trials are held, the dates of which will, I’m sure, be appearing in your common rooms in the next week or so. That is, I think, all,” she paused to look enquiringly at her colleagues, none of whom seemed inclined to mention anything else, “so all that remains is to wish you all goodnight, and to advise you not to stay up _too_ late as you have lessons in the morning.” She gave them all a brief smile and sat back down.

Noise in the hall swelled again, and over it Dean heard a voice calling, “First-years, over here please! Come on over here, first-years!” He hauled himself out of his seat and down the length of the table to where a tough-looking boy with a shaved head was marshaling them all together. “Is that all of you?” he asked, looking over the table in case there were any stragglers, then nodded to himself. “Right then guys, I’m Caleb Anderson, and this is Rachel Milton,” the blonde girl next to him waved, glasses glinting in the candlelight, “and we’re the Hufflepuff senior prefects - you have a problem, you come to us, okay? We’re gonna take you up to the common room now, and then from there you can go up and find your dorms, which is where is all your stuff's gone, and unpack and everything before bed. Follow me.”

They all trooped after him out into the Entrance Hall and through a large doorway to the side of marble staircase, Dean registering vaguely that the Slytherins were going with them, but the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were going up the marble staircase, and spared a thought for all the stairs ahead of them. He was pretty sure if he tried to climb now his legs would fall off. The Slytherins peeled off down another corridor, but the Hufflepuffs kept going until they came to a seemingly random collection of wooden barrels, presumably somewhere near the kitchen.

"Now pay attention," Caleb said, and Rachel stepped forward, tapping five times on one of the bottom barrels and saying "Helga Hufflepuff" as she did. The barrel fel open, and it wasn't a barrel but a little tunnel, lit with candlelight, and Caleb started shepherding people through.

The Hufflepuff common room, once Dean had squeezed through, turned out to be big and circular and full of big squishy buttercup-yellow armchairs and wooden tables surrounded by chairs upholstered in black and gold. Candlelight was reflected in the burnished copper hanging on the walls, and the windows were wide expanses of blank black glass that, in daylight, would obviously light the whole room. It was pretty full, people obviously meeting up with friends after the summer break and filling them in their lives, sitting on the tables or huddled in the armchairs, with the little knot of first-years bunched nervously together in front of the entrance eyeing everything with interest and a little apprehension.

“Welcome to Hufflepuff basement,” Caleb announced, coming in himself. Behind him, Dean saw that the barrel had sealed itself shut. “This is where everyone hangs out after lessons to do homework or when it’s too cold to go outside. And this is _our_  common room, okay - nobody else gets the password, not even if they’re your brother or your sister or your best friend since you were babies. You wanna hang out with them, you go somewhere else. Got it? Good. Okay, so: girl’s dorms are through that door, boy’s through this one. Don’t try and go into each other’s dorms please, you won’t get very far and everyone else in the tower will know that you tried and will laugh at you. The house elves will bring you your house ties tonight so you can put them on tomorrow before lessons start. Breakfast starts at seven thirty for the early birds and finishes at quarter to nine. Any questions?”

No one said anything, so Caleb nodded at them with a brief smile and walked away, getting absorbed into one of the groups by the fire. Rachael lingered long enough to give them all a smile and an eyeroll that said not to mind Caleb and his brusqueness, then she too disappeared into the crowd, and the first-years all glanced sideways at each other and started shuffling towards the two doors.

Yet another low-ceilinged tunnel greeted them, but it was only Dean and Ash now, and one other boy with a ready smile who said he was called Isaac. After passing several door ensconced in the walls they found a one with a sign on saying _1st years_  and Dean pushed it open, the other two crowding in after him.

Like the common room it was circular, but the only furniture was the three four-poster beds spaced evenly around the walls, each with a trunk at the end and the little chest of drawers to one side like a bedside table. Copper lamps like the room warm and cozy, complimented by the cheerful patchwork bedspreads, and opposite them was another door, which Dean could only assume led to a bathroom. His trunk was at the end of the bed closest to the bathroom and he headed over to it, flipping the lid up so he could get to his stuff. He chucked his pajamas at the bed, and his wash things after them, then scooped out the photo of Dad and Sammy to put up on top of the bedside table; Dad standing against the door of the Impala, smiling a little, with his hands on Sam’s shoulders and Sam waving and grinning like an idiot, squinting against the sunlight in his eyes. Dean had taken it a couple of weeks ago with the camera Uncle Bobby had sent him for Christmas, in preparation for going off to school.

“That your dad?” Ash asked, peering over his shoulder, and Dean nodded. “Nice car.”

“It’s a ‘67 Chevy Impala,” Dean said, felling the familiar bubble of pride in his chest. “She’s been in the family since before my parents were even married.”

“Muggle car, yeah?” Isaac asked from across the room, and Dean frowned over at him, cause what did it matter? “Hey, I was just asking.”

“My dad’s a Muggle, so yeah,” he said defiantly, daring Isaac to make something of it, but Isaac just held his hands up, smiling again.

“Chill Winchester, I’m not some kind of Death Eater - my granddad’s a Muggle. He’s been trying to teach me Muggle magic tricks, ever since I was little; says it’s the only magic they won’t teach me here.”

“What, like a dove up your sleeve and all that crap?” Ash asked, intrigued, and the conversation moved into safer waters, Isaac eventually demonstrating a bunch of Muggle card tricks with Ash’s exploding snap deck, which culminated in the whole thing going off at once with a bang loud enough to rattle the window and get people yelling faintly from the other dorms.

Later, Dean lay in bed watching Sammy waving both arms like a windmill by the light filtering through the hangings, and trying to ignore the lump in his throat. He was gonna see them in three and a half months, okay, that was nothing. What if it was like the old days, when you didn’t see your family again until the summer? What about Dad, who was never gonna see Mom again except as a portrait, a shadow of herself and a reminder of what he’d lost? Three and half months was fucking _nothing_ , okay, and he had no damn right to cry about it. None.

He fell asleep to the blur of Sam’s movements, waving cheerfully to him through the dark.

*

dean quickly gathers a little gang - jo (gryffindor), ash, charlie, anna in the year above (also gryffindor). some slytherin clown called balthazar makes him laugh a lot, as well as an older gryffindor called gabriel, but they’re both also kind of douches, so. azazel was a six/seventh year prefect in dean’s first two years, and spent them quietly terrifying him by lurking (he’s slytherin and has yellow eyes, the result of generations of pureblood inbreeding. someone in his family killed mary). the sytherin pureblood castiel is mostly a loner in their peripheral, but ash (who's also pureblood) says he's good people, and so's his dad (his mum's dead too)

sam starts in dean’s third year. he’s in ravenclaw, and becomes unreasonably friendly with a slytherin in the year above called ruby (and her BFF Bela), as well as a girl in his own house called jess. dean’s little gang take fondly to him, especially ash and, to both of their annoyance, gabriel. at the end of the christmas term dean gets an owl that tells him they’re going to stay with dad’s friend bobby and, thoroughly mystified, they take the train back to kings cross, take a ministry car to the MoM and an international portkey directly to Bobby’s, to find that their father has fucked off god knows where and left them in bobby’s care, along with the talking portrait of their mother in her early twenties that’s all they have left of her.  
at the end of the year, a few ex-deatheaters sneak in and one called lilith corners dean along with the slytherin prefect alastair somewhere, but cas rescues him. unfortunately, cas’s grandmother was a veela and combined with magical dna it manifests itself in wings and hot hands when he’s feeling strong emotions and dean ends up with a burn on his shoulder that can’t be healed. they become friends though, and dean mellows out cas’s intense desire to be a prefect while cas helps dean get over his fear of flying. this brings dean into more contact with balthazar and gabriel, but they’re actually okay.

alastair spends dean’s fourth year subtley stalking him around school. gabe tells dean he should try out for the quidditch team after seeing him and cas go flying for fun one saturday afternoon. dean says he will next year, cause tryouts are already been and gone for this year (and also because fuck fuck fuck flying competitively in front of other people ahhh), and he makes cas practise with him, despite cas’ dislike of regulated flying. also, he’s sort of bluffing - he’s still not hugely confident on a broom unless he’s with cas. michael and luifer, the gryffindor and slytherin quidditch captains, spend the year having spats in the halls and turning their houses against each other.

in their fifth year there’s a lot of buzz, because teddy lupin has started in first year. michael and lucifer’s rivalry escalates and all the students are kind of creeped out. cas has been passed over for prefect and is pretending to be fine about it but really isn’t. balthazar, somehow, was made prefect instead, but at the end of the year he gives the badge up, citing boredom, following gabriel (who did the same thing the year before because “it was too much responsibility and I hated having to take points off myself for bad behaviour”), and cas gets it instead. dean spends the year comforting cas, and cas perks up when dean gets on the quidditch team as a beater. they’ve been getting closer anyway, and despite dean’s brief relationship with anna the year before and his and jo’s constant playful flirting, when hufflepuff win against slytherin in the semi-finals, cas fights his way through the crowd to congratulate dean and dean suddenly finds he really wants to kiss him. he gets dragged off to the celebratory party though, and it’s only later that cas turns up outside the painting and charlie, coming back from the kitchens with a fresh armload of food, tells dean, who immediately ducks out to see him. cas says he wanted to congratulate him again, sincere and right in his space, and dean chuckles low and breathless, says “did you now” with a glance up and down the corridor, and kisses him. (turns out cas’s wings don’t always come out because he’s angry). they beat gryffindor in the finals too.

cas gets increasingly srs bsns in their sixth year, undoing all dean’s good work in mellowing him out. he slowly distances himself from dean and everybody else, and balthazar says sadly that he really needs to give it up like he did. they go out of their way to try and hang out with him, but. also, sam and ruby seems to be getting kind of serious and it’s creeping dean out because seriously, he thought sam and jess had it made (well, except for madison the gryffindor last year, but they’re still friends so). completing the lucifer/michael parallels, the ravenclaw head boy, raphael, seems to have it for cas for no real reason, and they have to keep an eye on him as much as they can because dude keeps trying to hex cas between classes and is generally trying to undermine him everywhere, muttering about how he shouldn't even be a prefect, little half-blood freak etc etc. one of the girls, lisa, who’s little brother ben is in hufflepuff and thinks dean is the best thing ever, is almost on as good terms with the kitchen elves as gabe, and provides a welcome distraction and a sympathetic ear (also, sweets).

cas is made head boy in their seventh year. he totally isolates himself for everyone except his fellow prefects, and dean bitterly shelves his dreams of the pair of them having a night of aquatic sex in the prefect’s bathroom. he was made quidditch captain after anna left though, to his great surprise, and he’s kind of busy organising training sessions and worrying about matches. in the end, hufflepuff are in the semis again and when they just about manage to beat ravenclaw 370-240 after three hours play, dean shoves his exhaustion down and goes storming down to the slytherin common room and gets balthazar to bring cas out. they have a huge fight that blows up from whether cas even went to the match (”of course i did dean, but i’m very busy-”) to why dean even cares, since he has lisa now, to how dean isn’t fucking sleeping with her because he still likes cas even though he’s a fucking self-absorbed ass, to cas being sorry, but he’s got a responsibility here, sorry if dean can’t deal with that, because it’s not like he really knows the meaning of the word, etc etc while cas’s eyes burn gold and his wings flex like a threat. eventually dean lockjaws cas so he’ll listen and cas retaliates and then it becomes a full-on brawl, half fight and half duel, with half of hufflepuff coming out to see what the fuck is going on. they both get detention and seventy points off for fighting and using magic in the corridors and hurting each other and setting a terrible example. sam tells them they’re both idiots while they’re in the hospital wing, in full hearing of the other. cas comes to the quidditch final though, wearing slytherin colours, and when they draw after a spectacular catch by ben braedon he actually smiles at dean for a second.  
one day after their NEWTS, dean, who’s been lying in the sun with the rest of his class and throwing his chicken bones for the squid, sees movement over the quidditch pitch/forest/grounds. he’d know cas anywhere, especially destressing after his exams, so he goes in/over and just watches, leaning against the rail that blocks off the seats/a tree. he knows cas has seen him, but it takes him another ten minutes or so to come down. the conversation is stilted, awkward like they haven’t been since fourth year, and then as dean turns to go cas grabs his arm, says “dean” and kisses him, clumsy and rushed and electric.

 *

worldbuilding-wise: 

all the teachers are the same except  
mcgonagall is headmistress  
slughorn retired (stress you know) and professor crowley teaches potions.  
professor turner teaches DADA and is head of gryffindor  
professor zachariah teaches transfiguration and is head of slytherin.  
professor joshua teaches flying and referees quidditch matches

the campbell family aren't pureblood enough to be recognised by their english relatives but they are one of the big families in the US; mary marrying the muggle john winchester caused her father some conniptions, though he came round in the end. dean and sam were born in 1994 and 1996 respectively, which meant they were about canon ages in 1998 when a sect of american deatheaters murdered mary's parents and set her house ablaze. john's first thought was the safety of the kids, so since the american voldemort supporters were very underground and hard to root out even (especially) after the death of their leader, he fled to england, where harry potter had just saved the wizarding world and the authorities were much more able to deal with dark wizards and witches. the only thing he saved was the magical portrait of mary painted when she was 21, which was spelled against damage; she's not a substitute for his wife, but at least the boys can hear her tell them how much she loves them and how proud of them she is. as time passed, john became more and more fascinated/obsessed with his wife and children's world, collecting any spellbooks he could lay his hands on from unscrupulous back-ally dealers and poring over mary's old textbooks, trying to find the key, the reason, the spark that would let him better protect his family if they got attacked again. 

cas’s surname is novak, which was his mother’s name, but his father, chuck, goes by shurley and chuck’s new girlfriend, becky, is rosen. cas never talks about his mother otherwise though (she was killed as half-breed when cas was around 4 (97/8) so chuck went back home and got protection from his family/the house)  
michael, lucifer, balthazar and gabriel are cas’s cousins of varying degrees etc etc. Gabe once says that their family tree is less a tree than it is a bramble patch - tangled and twisted and hostile to intruders. they all kind of live in one huge ancestral mansion/castle thing, but by the time dean visits in the summer of their fifth year michael and lucifer are gone and it’s just cas, balthy and gabe. chuck and becky only live in a few rooms though, cause chuck hates rattling around in the house. (this means dean and cas can slip away easily...)

alastair’s surname is nott  
ash's surname, blishwick, is apparently canonically a super-old pureblood name  
anna’s surname is milton (her parents are both muggles, rachel is her older sister)  
gabriel’s is reynard (he and balthazar are cousins)  
michael is his first name (his last is shurley - chuck’s nephew)  
nick lucifer  
azarias raphael

post-hogwarts, dean sends his father an owl telling him he’s staying in the uk to train as an auror, because training under harry potter can only be the best, and then he’ll come back to america to help him. cas does the same (they have a moment where dean wonders if cas is just doing this for him and should be working in a bookshop in diagon alley instead. cas sets him straight - like dean, his mother was killed by death eaters, so fuck you very much. also, does dean really not think he has have a will of his own?). gabe is working at weasley’s wizard wheezes (he got kicked out of honeydukes for eating the merchandise). sam, who's best subject was history of magic (half the school had copies of his notes), is aiming for magical law enforcement ("future supreme mugwhump, dude" Dean teases, ruffling his hair).  
john sends dean the family owl, archie (archimedes, named by sam when he was little after too much _sword in the stone_ ) when he leaves, because regular trans-atlantic flights seems cruel. he sends them messages, when he needs to, via bobby, presumably by fire. when dean turn 17, he comes back to bobby’s in the summer to find the impala waiting for him outside. bobby assures him that john’s fine, he just thought it was time for a new car, and also that dean had come of age now in his world and therefore a present was needed.


	3. Hogwarts!verse - Potions accident

“Love potions are, of course, banned at Hogwarts,” Professor Crowley continued, glancing lazily round at them all, “and as NEWT students I’d hope you’d know better than to try and sneak anything that you make today out of this classroom, not least because there is no guarantee that any of the concoctions you produce will do anything more than poison the object of your affections.” He smiled thinly. “You may begin.”

Pretty soon after that the classroom filled with various coloured vapours and distracting scents, and time passed in a vaguely warm, fuzzy blur. Across from Dean Cas’s hair was sticking up in the damp from the way he’d been running his hands through it, and he was holding his shoulders in a way that suggested he was worried his wings might slip free of his control. Dean had to admit that if he had to put a name to this feeling it would be something like the lazy calm you got after a good orgasm, and when he next caught Cas’s eye he winked, which made Cas narrow his eyes at him but lick slowly over his lower lip as he examined the textbook.

Maybe if Dean hadn’t been so distracted he would have been able to react faster, but he was never really sure what happened. One minute Cas was running a finger over the page, intent and studious and hot, and the next his cauldron exploded and he staggered back, eyes huge and breath punched out of him, drenched to the skin and horrified.

The classroom went quiet, though Dean was sure he heard a stifled snort from over by the Ravenclaws, and then Professor Crowley was waving the ambient clouds away with his wand and saying crisply, “Hospital Wing, Novak. No Winchester, I’d really rather you didn’t touch him, but you should probably go with him to make sure no one else does.”

Dean drew his hand back. Cas spat potion onto the floor and blinked at him. His pupils were huge and dark in his dripping face, and he was staring at Dean’s mouth like he was hypnotized.

“ _Now_ , Winchester,” Professor Crowley said sharply, and Dean turned for the door, stretching a careful arm out to shepherd Cas with him. Cas’s wings shook out as they went and Cas rolled his shoulders, spreading them wide; Dean ducked away from them, mindful of Crowley’s warning. Behind them, the rest of the class murmured in surprise, and Dean heard low snickers as he waved Cas through the door and Cas turned to stare at him, eyes flicking all over his face before zeroing in on his mouth again.

“C’mon,” Dean told him, determinedly heading off down the corridor towards the Entrance Hall, and Cas followed him willingly, stumbling a little.

Halfway up the main stairs Cas wavered, and Dean, already at the top, turned to coax him the rest of the way. Cas was leaning on the banister like he needed it to hold him up, forehead almost touching the marble, and a faint, suspicious sizzling sound was coming from him the longer he leaned there. Dean winced, imaging what McGonagall would say if Cas disfigured the rebuilt grand staircase when it was still less than a decade old. 

“C’mon buddy, we’re almost there,” he said softly, and Cas mumbled something but slowly straightened up again. His face was flushed, hair now sticking to his skin and lips cracked and dry. Dean almost went down there to help him, let him lean on him, but he was pretty sure that either 1) he’d burn up, literally, 2) he’d catch the same thing, or 3) Cas would tackle him to the floor and fuck him right there, if the gigantic boner Dean’d been trying to ignore was anything to go by. He’d like to think that at least some of the red in Cas’s cheeks was embarrassment, but he was pretty sure Cas was too far gone for that.

The scorchmarks Cas left on the banister as he inched his way up the stairs to Dean looked like dirty fingerprints, and walls and door lintels on the way to the Hospital Wing suffered the same fate, little red embers glowing in every fingerprint. By the time Dean knocked urgently on the door Cas was sagging behind him and swaying on his feet, and Dean was worried that at any moment he’d feel Cas’s hot, burning fingers on his shoulder as he struggled to keep his balance, and then he’d end up with _another_ handprint scar for the team to stare at in the changing room. 

Madam Pomfrey’s assistant opened the door, took one look at Cas and went visibly paler. “Potions accident,” Dean explained helplessly, and she collected herself, told them to wait one second and ran back down the ward to the Matron’s office.

“It had to be you, didn’t it Novak?” Madam Pomfrey said wearily when she appeared at the door, opening it wide and waving him in. “Love potions! At your age! Might as well run the Triwizard again, it’d be safer!” She looked briefly back at Dean. “Thank you, Winchester, we’ll take him from here. He didn’t touch anyone, did he?”

“No, Professor Crowley said he shouldn’t.” She nodded approvingly and followed Cas to the nearest bed, where the assistant was already drawing the curtains around him. “Can I come see him, later?” Dean called after her, but she either didn’t hear him or couldn’t be bothered to reply.

*

In Dean’s absence his potion had congealed and gone all lumpy and purple, which made Professor Crowley click his tongue in irritation and award him a P, despite the extenuating circumstances. Dean was tempted to throw it at him and see how _he_ liked it, but in the end he figured a detention would stop him seeing Cas so he contented himself with _Scourgify_ -ing his cauldron with particular vigour and imagining it was Crowley’s smug face.

Transfiguration went about fifty times slower than usual without Cas next to him, though Professor Turner did ask where he was and remarked that he hoped Cas hadn’t set fire to anything between the classroom and the Hospital Wing. Dean assured him from between clenched teeth that no sir, he hadn’t, and Professor Turner dismissed the conversation and started the day’s lecture, while Dean spent the next fifteen minutes remembering the heat coming off Cas by the end, like he was some kind of human furnace, and the desperate fingerprints scorched into various door frames as he fought to stay upright.

Finally the lesson was over though, and Dean bolted out of the classroom and hightailed it to the Hospital Wing, where the other assistant opened the door and reluctantly allowed him in.

“Only for a few minutes though,” he warned him sternly. “Then we need to change his ice again.”

“Sure, whatever,” Dean agreed, and then he was allowed to slip past the curtain and see Cas, whose bed had been transfigured into a bath with chunks of ice floating in it. He was in his school shirt and boxers, cheeks still flushed pink but nowhere near the hectic red they’d been when he came in, and his eyes showed a little more blue around their still unusually-large pupils. 

“Dean,” he slurred, blinking, and Dean gave him his best smile, aware of the assistant still lurking outside.

“Hey buddy. I got all your homework and stuff, so you don’t need to worry about that. Uh, cause I know you’re a freak like that. It’s nothin’ too hard, just another essay on Laverne de Montmorency and her creepy little fetish for Rohypnol-ing dudes, and some theory stuff for Turner on turning chairs into goats.”

“Animal transfiguration is tough,” Cas agreed, sounding a little more with it, and Dean risked a glance around to check if the assistant was gone, then leaned in. The water was clear, and the wet, flimsy material of Cas’s boxers was doing absolutely fuck-all to hide the swollen line of his dick.

“Hey Cas, I could- I mean, if it’s gonna help, cause _they’re_ not gonna-” He mimed the jerk-off motion, just in case the assistant had Disillusioned himself or something like a giant perv and was still listening, and Cas actually groaned, then slapped his hand to his mouth to muffle it and actually bit down. His hips jerked hard, making the water slosh, and all the ice in the bath vanished. 

“No, Dean,” Cas hissed after a moment, eyes still squeezed shut and teethmarks red around the base of his thumb. “That wouldn't help at all.”

*

By lunch the next day Cas was allowed out, Balthazar dropping by the Hufflepuff table to let Dean know.

“Can he- I wanna see him. Please? We could meet in Library, that little alcove with the-”

“I don’t think canoodling is really on his mind right now, Dean,” Balthazar said reprovingly, tugging himself away from the hand Dean had clamped around his arm, and Dean rolled his eyes.

“I _know_ that, dickbag, I just wanna talk. You know what he’s been like lately. We can just plan revenge on Raphael and like, cuddle, I don’t care, I just wanna hang out with him again.” Sam’s patented puppy eyes didn’t look half as appealing on him, but he tried them anyway, since Balthazar had always seemed to have a soft spot for Sam. “Please, Balthazar, just tell him.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Balthazar said dramatically, and would probably have thrown his arms up if Dean hadn’t been holding on to one. “I’ll tell him. Now let go of me, or people will start to talk.”

“Yeah, they’ll talk about how you’re a giant drama queen,” Dean returned, hardly his finest comeback but fuck it, and Balthazar tutted in disappointment and headed back to the Slytherin table.

The paper aeroplane found Dean just before he went into Charms, butting into his shoulder hard enough to crumple its nose. _Not the library_ was all it said, in Balthazar’s looping scrawl, so Dean wrangled his quill out his bag, propped the piece of paper against the wall and added _Prefects bathroom 9:00_ , then refolded it and sent it back.

Dean fully expected the aeroplane to return with Cas’s elegant, rounded handwriting informing him that a non-Prefect going into the Prefect’s bathroom was illegal and the date was off, but no such letter arrived and he ended up having to sweettalk Gabe into giving him the password, gleaned from Anna. In the end, because Gabe liked him, it only cost him the rest of his last Honeydukes haul, which Dean though was actually a pretty good deal. 

He waited for Cas by the statue of Boris the Bewildered anyway, because the bathroom didn’t let you in if someone else was already in there, and he only had to duck in himself once to avoid Peeves and Mrs Norris, who the poltergeist was chasing with a peashooter. Cas turned up at nine on the dot, an ink smear on his cheek from where Dean guessed he’d been catching up on the work he’d missed and hands cupped around his elbows, eyeing Dean warily from under his hair like he thought Dean was gonna jump him right there.

“ _Squeaky clean_ ,” Dean whispered to the door, and the pair of them shuffled inside. The click of the closing door echoed off the marble. He glanced sideways at Cas but Cas avoided his eyes, so Dean shucked his shoes, socks and sweater and went to turn on the taps. The bubbles he sent frothing into the bathing pool reminded him of the hazy air in Potions the other day, and he watched them surge across the stone with a grin; tiny white foamy ones like the head on a Butterbeer, big bouncing iridescent ones, ones that come out in a long stream like Christmas baubles and twisted themselves into weird shapes, little pearly ones that clustered together into mountains under the taps.

Cas was still not looking at him, apparently waiting for him to make the first move, so Dean sat on the edge of the bath and rolled his trousers up to his knees, then dropped his legs down to skim the bubbles with his toes, kicking idly at the bigger ones as they went by. “Stop being an ass, Cas.”

“We shouldn’t be in here,” Cas answered from behind him, and Dean twisted round to find him chewing on his lower lip and glaring at him. “You’re not a prefect, and I’ve got work to catch up on.”

“But we are,” Dean pointed out, bracing himself on his arms so he could lean back and look at him. “So sit down before you give yourself an aneurism.”

Cas huffed out the sigh of the extremely put-upon but toed off his shoes and socks, coming to sit down a good few feet away and concentrating fiercely on rolling up his trousers. Dean rolled his eyes and shuffled himself closer.

“I don’t like you as a prefect, Cas, you’re turning into a giant dick about everything.”

“I have standards to uphold,” Cas said stiffly, the _something you would clearly know nothing about_ heavily implied. “Also, in case you haven’t noticed, we have our future to worry about. What we do in school now will affect our career options later.”

“I doubt anyone ever got denied entry to Auror training just for sneaking into the Prefect’s Bathroom,” Dean retorted. “And everyone knows Potter spent half _his_ school career sneaking round in his invisibility cloak and wondering into the Forest.”

“I’m trying to set an example,” Cas snapped back, but his shoulders had sagged, and Dean slid himself the last foot or so and butted their shoulders together. “Raphael will take any opportunity he gets to prove to McGonagall how unfit I am to be prefect.”

“Dude needs to be sprayed with fertilizer and locked in with the Venomous Tentacular,” Dean agreed, and Cas snorted, the tiniest smile flickering across his mouth. Taking a chance, Dean slid his hand across and curled his fingers around Cas's; Cas sighed, but let him.

"I can't prove it was him," Cas said finally, almost lost under the roar of the water filling the pool, and Dean squeezed his fingers to show he'd heard. "I wish he'd just...get over it. This isn't a damn competition, and I'm not a, a _threat_."

"Dude's fucked in the head," Dean opined, squeezing Cas's fingers again then wrangling himself to his feet to shut the water off. "Seriously Cas, you should report him, he could've really fuckin' hurt you!"

"But like I said, I can't prove anything," Cas said with the slightest shrug, "and then it'd go down on my record as 'complaining about my peers' or 'falsely accusing my fellow prefects of malicious-' mmph!"

"Stop makin' excuses because of your precious reputation," Dean said against his mouth, and Cas made a vague sort of indignant noise and bit at his lower lip. "Ow. Hey, are you sure there isn't still some of that potion in your system? Cause-"

"Don't think so," Cas said, stealing another brief, searing kiss. "Maybe I just want you to shut up."

"Cas..." Dean put his hands on Cas's shoulders, warm even through his jumper, and dropped back down to sitting. "I'm serious man, you're goin' a bit Carrow with the power thing, even Balthazar's noticed."

"Yes, because Balthazar's the authority on good prefectship," Cas said flatly, pushing away, and Dean stood with him, because fuck Cas wasn't _listening_.

"Yeah well, neither are you, okay! You're _obsessive_ about it, man, we hadn't even talked for like a week before Potions the other day! It's like you're choosing fuckin' giving out detentions and patrolling for first-years out of bed over me!"

Cas closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, fingers twitching. "Dean, Balthazar was a terrible prefect, irresponsible and half-arsed and giving us a bad name, and I have to prove that I'm better than that! If I don't, McGonagall will-"

"What?" Dean snapped. "McGonagall will do _what_? Demote you? Who cares! It's not a damn competition!"

"I need to show that _I'm_ responsible!" Cas returned heatedly, clenching his fists, wings snapping into being with a furious serpentine rustle. " _I'm_ not Balthazar, _I_ can handle authority, _I_ am mature enough to be an Auror!"

"How the fuck does this-"

"They killed my mother!" Cas snarled. "Every fucking student who fought the Battle of Hogwarts went on to become a fucking Auror, and they're running out of Dark wizards to catch! They only take the best now! And I am not fucking being told I'm not good enough to hunt down shitspawn like them because I didn't try hard enough when I was at school!"

"Oh, so what, I'm not good enough to be an Auror because I'm not fucking sticking a broom up my ass and taking ten points off every time some kid breathes too loudly?" Dean demanded, and Cas's wings bristled.

"Don't make this about you, Dean! You wanted to know why _I_ value being a prefect! That's why!"

"You're not the only person who lost someone in the War, Cas! They'll choose Aurors by who's the best at duelling and concealment and shit, pratical spells, not by who was given the most power at school!"

"Power means responsibility! Maturity! Both of which are desirable qualities-"

"Not when it turns you into some You-Know-Who wannabe! That's what I'm _saying_ , Cas, you need to get over yourself! It feels like we're losing you, man, and I wish you'd stop and just give it up like Gabe and Balthazar, cause it's turning you into someone I don't fuckin' like! Not to mention that Raphael takes it so seriously that one of these days he might fucking use an Unforgivable on you!"

"I find that highly unlikely," Cas said finally, cold as ice. His fingertips were bright red, a pink flush across his whole hands except his white knuckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't remember where this was going - angry!sex? Cas just storming out and continuing their weird sixth year relationship issues? I think it was going to be bathroom sex until Cas got pissy and Dean couldn't resist matching him. Sigh.


	4. Hogwarts!verse - mistletoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set during sixth year (so about the same time as the previous chapter actually), when Cas was getting really stuck in to the prefect thing

“Cas!” 

Cas spins round, wand up, and Dean holds both hands up lazily. 

“Don’t hex me, dude, you’ll ruin all my plans.”

“Dean, why are you out of bed?” Cas asks, coming back towards him, and Dean grins at him from under the rakishly-angled tinsel circle on his head.

“Thought I’d liven up your patrol, sweetheart.”

Cas looks unmoved. “Dean, you’re supposed to be in the Hufflepuff basement.”

Dean spreads his hands. “Well I’m not.” He reaches out, sets his fingers over Cas’s tie. “C’mon buddy, live a little. ‘S not like Voldemort’s gonna come busting in through the window.”

Cas flinches at the name despite himself then sets his jaw, and Dean wraps his hand in Cas’s tie to make sure he can’t get too far. “Dean, you know that’s not why-”

“Filch is lurking round the library,” Dean continues, slowly tightening his grip on the tie and walking backwards, “probably waiting for Pince, and Peeves is hanging around to fuck with him-”

“The other prefects-” Cas starts, shuffling forward a few steps in obedience to the pull at his throat, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Will be jealous you get my hot ass when you’re meant to be getting bored poking round empty classrooms.”

“This sort of, of fraternisation is what I’m supposed to be preventing,” Cas says insistently, but it lacks conviction and his eyes have dropped to Dean’s mouth, and Dean smirks at him.

“It’s almost Christmas, Cas, lighten up.” He sweeps the tinsel off his head and onto Cas’s, where it sparkles silver against his hair. “There, like a little Christmas angel.”

Cas narrows his eyes at him. “I hope this isn’t going where I think it’s going.”

Dean hops up onto one of the desks and tugs him in, bracketing him with his knees. Cas settles against him willingly enough, body warm between Dean’s thighs, and Dean drapes his arms ostentatiously over his shoulders and tries for innocence. “And where’s that?”

Cas’s eyes are washed silver and grey in the dark. “ _Dean_ -”

Dean just chuckles and cups both hands at the back of Cas’s head, pulling him in for a kiss. Cas leans into it with a huff, hands curling up over Dean’s thighs to his hips, and Dean closes his legs around him, dragging both hands up through Cas hair to make him hum appreciatively and push into it, spine arching like a cat. Dean lets one hand slip down and slides it flat over Cas’s shoulderblade, and Cas makes a stifled little noise and sucks at his tongue.

“That a wand in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me,” Dean murmurs, nipping at his lower lip, his hand curving around Cas’s hip and down to the front of his trousers, and Cas hitches in a breath as Dean’s palm smooths over his cock. He surges forward, hands falling from Dean’s hips to smack onto the desk with a faint sizzle, and the kiss breaks so he can bury his face in Dean’s shoulder as his wings snap out with a rush of air and the dry, silky rustle of scales. “Mmm yeah, there you go baby,” Dean purrs, dropping his other hand down to stroke the bottom edge of one of the wings, the scales soft and smooth under his fingers, and Cas chokes off a moan and sucks at his neck, probably hard enough to leave a mark and thank god it’s winter and he has an excuse to wear a scarf-

“WELL WELL WELL, WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?” booms a gleeful, distinctly botanical kind of voice, and they jerk apart. The mistletoe surveys them without eyes, radiating evil delight. “OH NO, DON’T STOP ON MY ACCOUNT. I ALWAYS LIKE TO SEE VOLUNTARY KISSING-”

“ _Silencio_!” Dean snaps, but the thing evades the spell, its giggles surprisingly high-pitched.

“OH NO, YOU DON’T GET OUT OF THIS SO EASILY,” it proclaims happily, and if it doesn’t wake the whole castle it’ll certainly bring Filch or Peeves running.

“Oh god, fucking shut up!” Dean hisses, shifting away from Cas so Cas can get to his wand too. “Jesus motherfucking-”

“YOU WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE, BOY,” the mistletoe says severely, clearly enjoying itself immensely. “MORE KISSING, LESS SWEARING.”

“If we do as you request,” Cas says evenly, looking straight at it with his fingers clenched tight on his wand, “will you leave us alone?”

“CERTAINLY!” the mistletoe booms cheerfully. “PROPER KISSING, MIND. WITH TONGUE.”

Dean thunks his forehead into Cas’s shoulder. “We’re being ordered around by a voyeuristic plant,” he groans, and Cas pets his hair. “Just so you know, this was _not_ how I pictured this ending.”

“That’s very reassuring,” Cas whispers back, sounding more like himself than he has since they came back after the summer, and Dean counts that at least as a win.

“Alright,” he says, pulling away and glaring at the mistletoe, which is now hovering several feet inside the door and projecting impatience. “Here it goes.” He closes his eyes, blocking out their floating audience, and press his lips to Cas’s.

“TONGUE!” thunders the mistletoe for somewhere just over Cas’s shoulder, making them both jump, and Dean is sorely tempted to hex it, but Cas makes a pissy noise and changes the angle, pushing forward and kissing him like he’s got him pinned flat on the desk and spread out to rut against, like he’s trying to make Dean come from it, and Dean’s brain kind of shorts out. Cas’s wings are warm and slick-soft under his hands, his body is pressed flush to Dean’s own and his tongue is doing filthy things that suggest without words all manner of ways that _Cas_ imagines this could end, and when he stops sucking on Dean’s lower lip and breaks the kiss Dean maybe makes a needy little noise he will deny forever. The mistletoe, apparently satisfied, is gone.

“You need to go,” Cas breathes, tipping his head against Dean’s, and Dean shakes his head and twists forward, seeking his mouth again. “ _No_ , Dean, you-”

“Please...” Dean mumbles against his lips, pressing his hand against the swell of Cas’s cock through his trousers, “Cas-”

“ _Dean_ -” Cas sucks in a shuddery breath, hips shoving into Dean’s palm like he just can’t help himself, “Dean, Filch could have heard, _Peeves_ might turn up-”

“Don’t care,” Dean says, pressing quick little kisses to Cas’s gorgeous swollen mouth, hearing his accent thicken with every word, “can fuckin’ walk in on me blowin’ you, I don’t fuckin’-”

“ _I_ care!” Cas manages, wrenching himself away, wings bristling. “I’m a _prefect_ , they could take my _badge_ -”

“ _Fuck_ your fuckin’ _badge_ , it’s makin’ you a dick anyway! Ever since you got the fuckin’ thing you’ve had a broom up your ass, ‘s no fuckin’ wonder Gabe and Balthazar gave it up, it sucks the fuckin’ life outta you!”

Cas draws himself up, fists white at the knuckles, wings crooked like an angry bird. “You need to go Dean, before someone finds us. This was a stupid idea I should never have let you talk me into.”

Dean gapes at him, even as a small part of his brain notes that they are damn lucky it’s only been the mistletoe interrupting them, especially with all this shouting. “Cas, what the fuck is wrong with you? It’s just a little fun! And don’t you fuckin’ _dare_ put all the blame on me for this, you were the one fuckin’ my damn hand!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand then they either have angry sex anyway or Cas storms off and leaves Dean hanging, I was never quite sure (though I leaned towards the former). In any case, it's becoming a theme - poor Dean.
> 
> All credit for the mistletoe goes, of course, to The Shoebox Project.


	5. 9.02 AU - Dean gets possessed

The floor is cold and wet, and his cheek’s half-submerged in a puddle that laps up to the corner of his mouth, tasting like wet earth. He flexes his limbs experimentally and finds he’s not tied up, which is good - and then he pushes himself up on his arms to have a look around and finds that nothing is good at all.

“Hi there, pretty,” Abaddon says cheerily, and kicks him back down, boot coming down on his neck to keep him there. Luckily he’s got his head turned to the side and the water’s pretty shallow, though it’s still not exactly easy to breathe through one nostril and half his mouth. He can’t see him anymore, but behind her Sam’s slumped against the wall, clearly still out cold, hands and feet bound and a noose loose around his neck. The girl, Tracy, is several feet away, held by two impassive male-bodied demons and kicking up a fuss about it. Good for her, Dean thinks wearily, but it won’t do her any good.

“What do you want,” he manages, spluttering half of it and getting water into his mouth, dank and cold.

“Well pet, that’s a question I could take a lot of time answering, but let’s start at the top and say I want a good long ride in your meatsuit.” She kicks him over onto his back, then gracefully drops down to straddle him, pinning his wrists with one hand and tapping the knife in her other hand speculatively against his cheek. She uses it to flip his jacket and shirt aside, and slices open his t-shirt in one swift motion, not bothering to be gentle about it and scoring a bloody line in his skin. She rips the material open and purses her lips, considering the careless gash that’s just caught the edge of the protection tattoo. “Mmm, I think we’d better make _sure_ , don’t you?” she says thoughtfully, and that’s all the warning Dean gets before she’s digging the blade in and dragging it slowly and steadily diagonally down through the inked skin. He tries to keep quiet, but it burns and builds on itself, shocked nerves screaming to life in the wake of the blade. “Shh baby, don’t cy, it’ll all be over soon,” Abaddon croons, and Dean twists and bucks beneath her but she’s like stone on top of him, as immovable as an angel.

She tosses the knife carelessly away when she’s done, and looks down at him coquettishly, a little smile quirking her lips. Then she swoops down and kisses him, free hand pinching his nose shut so his mouth gasps open, and something oily and bitter fills it and ripples down into his throat, alive and searching. He feels himself try to choke but at the same time represses it, throat spasming once then stilling. Something sharper than pins and needles sparks up his spine, and then it’s like his whole body goes numb, all at once. He can’t move his legs, his fingers, his eyes - he can’t even blink, and Abaddon giggles as she holds his eyelids open until his eyes start to ache.

Eventually the muscle twitches annoy her though, or perhaps she just gets bored, but his vision flutters and the ache recedes while she turns her attention to other things. “Hmm,” she says with his voice, sounding pleased, and sits up, knocking her old body out of the way and stretching out his arm, examining his fingernails, flexing the muscles. She runs his hands over his chest and grimaces; down between his legs and squeezes, amused when it makes him snarl wordlessly at her inside his head and his body perk up, sensitized. _You think that girl over there’s pretty hot, right?_ she teases, leaving his hand curled loosely against his thigh. _Want her to blow you?_

 _ **No**_ , Dean snaps. _You got me, you leave her out of this_.

 _Okay, maybe I won’t make her blow you_ , Abaddon concedes. _Maybe you can just come all over that pretty face. Cover the tear tracks and quiet that nasty little mouth_.

 _ **No**_.

_Aw, c’mon, I know you want to think you’re all grown up now, but we both know that your first thought was how taut her stomach would be, with her tits all perky and round and-_

Dean throws himself at her, at the sense of her lounging around outside the little prison he’s been banished to inside his own damn head, and she laughs and bats him away and holds him down like a cat tiring of a mouse.

“Ah ah ah Dean,” she says, out loud, stretching his lips into a grin. “Play nice, or I’ll have to break out the restraints and keep you locked away in there, and you won’t know what I’ve done until I bring you out to see.” She flashes him some visual aids, in case he doesn’t get it: the bunker, bloody and overturned, Kevin cowering away from him and begging brokenly for his life; Cas, staring helplessly up at him as he pours holy oil slowly, gently over his head, crimson-smeared mouth open to show broken teeth and the dark meaty stump of his tongue; Sam, slumped in his arms, the handle of the knife between his ribs juddering as he gasps for breath he can’t get, one hand still trying weakly to push Dean away-

 _Alright, alright I get it, **stop**_.

“There’s a good boy,” she purrs, and stalks over to Sam. She pats roughly at his cheek. “Hey Sammy, c’mon, wakey wakey kiddo, got a lot to do,” she says, gruff, a passable imitation of him (like Sam’ll be fooled for a minute), and Sam’s eyes flicker open.

They’re blue, unearthly and shining.

It feels like a shockwave goes through him, a bomb blast that knocks him off his feet, hot like the desert and searing, blinding, washing through him like a firestorm that leaves nothing but ash behind. When he finally blinks the spots away and lifts a hand to run at his eyes - he _lifts his own goddamn hand to his own goddamn eyes_.

“Thanks, Zeke,” he says rustily, clambering back onto his feet, but Sam’s body’s gone limp again, Ezekiel obviously overtaxed and done for the day.

“Who the _hell_ is ‘Zeke’?” Abaddon demands, and for a split second Dean thinks the angel was too weak, she’s still in him - then she slams into him, back in her old body again, and they both go crashing into the wall. It hurts like hell, and after a confused moment of wrestling Abaddon grabs him by the hair and punches his head into the concrete a couple more times. “You’ve got a fucking _angel_ in there?”

“Sure do, sweetheart,” Dean says drunkenly, not quite sure which way’s up anymore. “What can I say, Heaven likes me.”

*

[I don't remember where this one was going either. Nowhere darker than it's already been though, and it would have ended up like the show episode. I think]


	6. AU S6 outline

This time, there is no garrison backing him up, no brothers and sisters to help him carve a path to the soul flickering but defiant amidst all the horrors of the Pit; there is just Castiel, alone but for the purpose singing through his Grace, in what he cannot help but think of as his heart. Last time he was just another angel; this time demons flee before him and cower from the blaze of his conviction. 

Except this one, who appears suddenly a little further down the semblance of a corridor in his usual impeccable suit, an intricate, spiked silver crown atop his head, glittering with rubies and diamonds. "And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Castiel? Last I checked, Dean was very much alive and playing house."

Castiel knows this, just as he knows that humans see the sky as blue and the grass as green. Moments ago as humans measure time, he stood vesseled in Lisa Braeden's bedroom and soothed away Dean Winchester's nightmares, eased Lisa back into sleep where Dean's thrasing and broken, choked sobs of his brother's name had woken her. Standing there in the dark he had seen Dean's dream again - Sam on the same rack Dean himself had suffered upon, with the same tortures being vistited upon him as he stared at Dean, severed tongue rendering him unable even to cry out to him - and in that moment he had been unable to understand why Sam Winchester should remain in Lucifer's Cage when it caused Dean so much pain. A heartbeat later he had cast off his vessel and plunged down into the Pit.

"Ah, you're after the other one this time. Collecting the set, are we? You should have told me you were coming, I'd have made cookies."

Behind him, perhaps made bolder by the presence of their king, perhaps just less easily intimidated than their predecessors, other denizens of Hell are gathering. Many of those in human form are still carrying implements that drip blood and other fluids onto the floor, and watching Castiel in a way that suggests they would enjoy using them on him too. Castiel crooks his fingers and flares his wings, preparing to remove them from his path, when Crowley clicks his tongue and takes a step forward.

"Angels, always so _violent_. There's no need for that; they'll move if I tell them to."

"And why would you do that?"

Crowley shrugs. "Why wouldn't I? _I_ have no vested interest in keeping little Sammy down here, I'm sure Lucifer will be _much_ more amusing when he's deprived of his playthings." He pauses, apparently expecting Castiel to speak, then continues. "Also, I know where he is. I can take you to him."

"You think I don’t?"

Crowley waves a hand. "You know the rough direction, not the fastest route. And if I'm with you, there's no chance of you getting, ah, _waylaid_." He holds Castiel's eyes for a moment, then swings round and snarls, " _Go_." A second later, the hallway is empty, concrete floor stretching away into the distance, grey walls dripping water. It is almost like being back on Earth; Crowley has clearly made changes.

Under Alistair, this place was full of the damned, hanging from racks or nooses or crosses; the floor was soaked in the gore of unnumbered souls, the walls running with blood and filth. Some of them called out to Castiel as he passed, or cursed at him, or pleaded with him for forgiveness; demons had thronged amongst them, whispering and caressing and taunting, glancing up at the approaching angels with manic glee or undisguised intent. Castiel remembers how many were lost here, overpowered and set upon, necessitating others to go to their rescue and themselves fall victim; he remembers what was done to them, how they screamed, the dying flare of their Grace and the fall of feathers through the air. However righteous his mission, he would be unwise to continue traveling alone here.

He gives Crowley the barest nod and resumes his journey, the guttering flame of Sam Winchester's soul glimmering ahead of him and Dean's helpless, agonized shout of his brother's name echoing in his mind.

*

Lucifer's Cage is not a prison as humans would understand it; there are no bars, nor locks, just a section of Hell cut off from the senses; the only reason Castiel can get there at all is because he is looking for Sam. Even so, Crowley has to guide him on the final stretch, and then they're both standing before a bare swathe of rock, Sam's soul a faint and flickering thing somewhere nearby.

Crowley shoots him a look, then rubs his hands together. "You'll have to be quick."

"I know."

"And make sure you get him, not the other one."

Castiel doesn't dignify that with a reply; he closes his eyes, gathering his Grace close, and spreads his wings to their fullest extent. Crowley hisses out a curse and ducks out of their way, snatching his crown off his head and setting it carefully down, then takes a deep breath and steps up to the rockface, glancing back at Castiel one last time.

"Ready?"

Castiel nods, and Crowley sets both hands flat against the stone, then braces his shoulders and heaves. The rockface splits open and white light pours forth, the sheer contained _power_ of Lucifer and Michael together burning at Castiel's wings, his own Grace almost overwhelmed even by this small amount of theirs, the merest spark in comparison. Crowley bows his head, teeth gritted and his own form smoking at the edges like mist before the wind, and Castiel thrusts both hands into the fissure, arms searing in the heat of the contained Grace.

"Sam!"

Skin brushes against him, tentative and disbelieving; fingers touch to his wrist, and then a hand curls around his, grip as stong as the first time Castiel felt it and enclosed it in his own grasp. Castiel grabs back and pulls, wings sweeping forward to help, and Sam Winchester half-scrambles, half-falls out and into his arms. 

The rockface is rumbling now, small stones tumbling down and other cracks starting to crawl outwards from the main one, and Castiel drags Sam back far enough that Crowley has the space to close it up again. Crowley is blurred now, his very essence unravelling before the might of two archangels, but still he fights to bring the rift back together. 

It's almost closed when he goes rigid, swearing in five different languages and lunges forward, forcing one arm inside with a howl and staggering back with something clutched to his chest. Castiel throws himself into his place and puts all his power into shutting the Cage again; the angels inside scream wordlessly at him, fury and imprecations running together as they clutch at him, and he repels them with a desperate burst of Grace and finally brings the two halves of the split back together.

He stays on his knees for a moment afterwards, the air still ringing with savage Enochian, drawing his wings in close, and then Crowley rasps, "You almost forgot his fucking _soul_. What kind of angel are you?"

"The kind of angel that just did what you couldn't." He lifts his head and pushes himself to his feet, going back to Sam. The boy is bloody and broken; his ribs are splintered, canceling out the sigils on them, and his eyes are long gone, burned out by the angels' true forms. Castiel lays a hand on his forehead and summons the remains of his Grace, sends it shooting through Sam's body, rebuilding and restoring as he once did to Dean. 

When Sam is fully healed and deeply asleep Castiel turns. Crowley is kneeling in much the same position as him, his sleeve shredded and the arm beneath flayed down almost to the bone, cracked and blistered. Sam's soul is cradled in his good hand, glowing despite the raw wounds and older gashes it bears and rippling in distress at being held by a demon. Castiel makes to take it from him, but Crowley tears his eyes away from it and snorts, shuffling forward on his knees to press it to Sam's chest. It quivers for a moment, then spreads out like water and sinks into his skin, and Sam arches off the ground, eyes snapping open but unseeing, sucking in a silent gasp, then collapses limply back. His eyelids flutter, eyes rolling beneath them, and Castiel puts three fingers to his wrist, pushing him into a deeper sleep, and meets Crowley's eyes.

"We can’t leave him like this. His mind won't be able to take the strain."

Crowley raises his eyebrows. "What do you want me to do about it? Possess a brain surgeon and have a good old root around in there? It wouldn't do any good."

"Can’t we somehow block his memories of his time in the Cage?"

"Oh yeah, we'll just wall it off nice and neat and he'll be a good little boy and never poke and pry at it - oh, wait, he's a _Winchester_! Anyway, you really think Lucifer will be contained by a little wall?"

"Then it will have to be a big wall," Castiel says determinedly, and Crowley narrows his eyes at him. 

"I've already led you to him and helped you break him out, angel. Now you want me to help you shove Lucifer into a dark corner of his mind and make sure he stays there as well?"

Castiel meets his gaze squarely. "I would owe you a great debt."

Crowley smirks. "Now see, that's a little intangible for me. Normally it'd be your soul, but regrettably you don't have one. What about a millennium or two as my _personal_ slave? I bet you'd look pretty in a collar. No? Then I suppose there's only one other thing you're good for: what do you know about Purgatory?"

Castiel frowns. "It's where monsters go when they die, and also serves as a prison for those creatures too old and powerful for Hell." 

"Bingo. Where is it?"

"It's lost," Castiel says slowly, and Crowley grins.

"Not for much longer, if I have any say in the matter. So, there you have it: help me find Purgatory, and I'll help your precious little Sammy forget the Cage. Deal?"

"Why do you want to find it? You're already King of Hell."

Crowley taps the side of his nose. "Ah, that's confidential. Going once."

Crowley can't mean to control those elder beings, even assuming he does manage to find Purgatory and open it; they would most likely eat him for his insolence. What, though, if he intends to befriend them and then unleash them upon an unsuspecting Earth, a second Apocalypse? They've only just averted the other one. But what would Crowley stand to gain from that? Dominion, yes, but over a ruined and lifeless Earth. Surely he cannot think such a hollow victory would be worth it?

"Going twice."

Castiel would never allow that to happen though. None of the angels would allow that to happen. God might even come out of hiding to prevent it. It would never be allowed to come to pass. He raises his head.

"Deal."

*

He brings Sam back to Dean, because where else would he go? Time has passed and it's dark when they appear, the streetlight washing them in orange, and the house lights are bright and warm. Dean is sitting down to supper, light glinting in his hair. He is smiling, happy, and Lisa and Ben are smiling back at him. Sam watches almost hungrily, a strange expression on his face, and then he turns away.

"Sam?" 

"I'm sorry, I can't- just, _look_ at him, Cas. He's _happy_. This is what he's always wanted, and now he's got it. I'm- he _got out_ , and I'm not be the one to drag him back in." He stops, takes a few steps away and out of the streetlight's halo, shrouded in the dark. "Can you uh, take me to Bobby's?"

Castiel reaches for him, closes a hand on his shoulder. They've both decided to cut themselves out of Dean's life, out of love for him and what he's trying to build, here with the family he's always wanted; that doesn't mean it's easy. He unfurls his wings and takes them both away.

*

bobby determines he's him, sam explains about cas, and dean, and bobby agrees. cas goes back to heaven and does the equivalent of sleeping for three days. time passes. sam goes off with the campbells. cas continues hanging round dean and checking in occasionally on sam. raphael gives cas his ultimatum, cas goes to dean and crowley turns up and persuades him to go to war. he offers cas half the souls, and the starter pack from hell; cas's mental dean tells him he'd be a moron to accept, so he declines and goes back to watching dean, then to heaven. he takes all his followers to raphael's and basically tells him to go fuck himself, thus the war. lack of souls means all the rebels get much more badly hurt tho. the war’s still the reason he's awol - not that sam's praying so much now, but sometimes an angel is just useful on a hunt. 

the rest of the season progresses pretty much as normal - crowley still has people collecting alphas, christian is still possessed, dean leaves lisa when he finds out sam's back and he's still pissed no one told him, but this time everyone knows it was cas (he leaves crowley out until crowley says it, and he doesn't burn crowley's bones, just kicks him back to hell) and there's no soul plot, so no reaper!dean, no death and no sam killing innocents. he does still go for the sex though, because hey. the titanic stays sunk; angels are still bent on killing cas/the winchesters though, so the meta!verse still happens, and they still get the weapons, and after that it quiets down a bit. dean just shoots sampa when he sees him, there's no slug, so rufus lives; the mother still comes after crowley though. 

rachael still finds out about the deal, but this time it's not as serious because cas isn't after the souls, it's just the demon factor, and she takes him up to heaven to face his peers - they don't tell raphael, that would be stupid, but that's why he almost wasn't there to get the boys back, and he gets dragged back soon after, but that's their first inkling something's wrong. prayers to cas redirect to rachael, who tells them he's currently on trial but won't tell them why. balthazar doesn't know either, though he promises to snoop. they know cas and crowley got sam back, but that can't be it - balthazar does his whole "are you in flagrante with the king of hell" thing, and cas admits to the deal. this time though, balthazar being on his 'side' means busting him out of heaven's prision or whatever (raphael's found out by now and it's not good). balthazar does get him out, though that’s how he dies this time, and Cas almost dies too. there's no holy oil trap, just dean and cas having a serious conversation when cas wakes up. "it was all for you" is still there, though cas means it because it was all to get sam out to make dean happy. "did you kiss him?!" etc is still in, because dean. the late-night conversation might also still be there, and there might be sort-of declarations of feelings. 

they kind of have to go after the mother, but the angels are intent on hunting cas down and if he leaves the house they'll find him for sure, and crowley's laying real low. this leaves dean, sam, bobby, rufus and gwen to go after the mother; eventually rufus, bobby and sam go (the news says something about where she is/some hunter friend of rufus's calls/etc), and dean and gwen stay to guard the angels with the swords. she escapes though, and they only have two bullets left (bobby and rufus are canny mofos). gwen remembers something about the journal though, which leads them to dr visyak and her cabin in the woods. [thus, they can open purgatory and shove her back in! (does the good doc go back/sacrifice herself like sam too? with much sadfacing at bobby, natch) 

um, and then crowley is pissed with cas and cas burns up the paper with the purgatory instructions and tells him he just saved his life, and crowley's all sulky and says that's only one way to get into purgatory and vanishes. and then raphael and a bunch of angels appear all "hello, castiel". jk jk, then they all go back to bobbys and dean and cas have sex, the end. maybe.


	7. S6 - Cas gets turned into a cat

Clearly, it was too good to be true. After all, Bobby had actually managed to eat his supper with only _two_ interruptions, and then catch an entire _half_ of some old cowboy movie before he'd called it a night, what with not having any research or other vitally important save-the-world crap to keep him up. So _of course_ his phone goes off what feels like not two seconds after his head touches the pillow, and _of course_ it's Sam who answers his snarled " _What_?" with what sounds like genuine sheepishness.

"Sorry Bobby, I know it's past eleven there, but. Uh. We kind of have a problem."

Bobby closes his eyes and counts to ten. "What kinda problem?"

Sam takes a deep breath. "What do you know about cats?"

***

_Earlier that day_

"I freakin' _hate_ witches."

"Dean," Sam says absently, most of his attention on the local paper spread out in front of him, "we don't know it even _is_ witches yet."

Dean stabs at another mouthful of pancake. "Sam, we're a couple miles out from _Salem_. Frankly, I'd almost be disappointed if it wasn't, except for the part where I hate them."

"It's just a few local kids gone missing; no one's been magically promoted to CEO, or won the lottery, or even died mysteriously. Not really standard witch MO."

"Yeah, well is there a gingerbread house around? Cause that's where they'll be." 

Sam rolls his eyes. "Yeah, great, thanks for that." He refolds the paper. "Well, there's nothing else in here that sounds suspicious, so I guess we'll just have to go talk to their parents."

*

Turns out that the parents aren't much help either; all they know is their precious little darlings never came home from school four days ago. They haven't noticed anyone acting strangely lately, no one new skulking around the neighbourhood, and the weirdest thing they've seen recently is the frogs that keep turning up on their front porch.

"Frogs," Sam repeats, glancing over at Dean, and Mrs Dalloway nods. 

"Yes, every time I go outside there a frog waiting just outside the door, staring at me. I always pick them up and put them under the bush, I can't stand the thought of killing them, but I really have no idea where they're coming from. And they always seem to be trying to get into the house." She tucks her hair behind her ear and offers Dean another cookie and a small smile. "Of course, if my husband finds them it'll be a different story."

"Has anyone else reported....frogs?" Sam asks, and she cocks her head, thinking.

"Well, that's the funny thing - no one else has had the same problem except Mrs Hawkins down the street. Perhaps my flowers just attract particularly tasty flies." She titters a laugh, watching Dean out the corner of her eye. He's busy exchanging a look with Sam though; Mason Hawkins is another one of the missing boys.

"Well thank you Mrs Dalloway, you've been very helpful," he says, standing, and Sam follows his lead. 

"I'm sure we'll find your son soon."

"Thank you, officers," she breathes, tissue still clutched in one hand. "And please," she adds, touching Dean's arm, "call me Marissa."

*

Abigail Hawkins also reports amphibians in her front yard, though she says they're toads and her second son, Connor, agrees. He also insists on taking them outside with him and showing them the thing, which is hunched amongst his toy soldiers looking broodingly resigned to its role as Toadzilla, soldiers scattered dead around it. 

"You play with it?" Dean asks, crouching down to Connor's level, and Connor nods enthusiastically. 

"It waits for me to get back from school, and it kind of jumps up and down when it sees me, like a dog." He beams down at it, patting it gently with his whole hand. "Sometimes I even think it knows what I'm saying."

"You do, huh?" Dean asks, glancing up at Sam. "How long you been playing with it?"

Connor scrunches his face up, thinking. "Mmm, since Friday maybe." The toad croaks, deep and resonant, and Dean raises his eyebrows at it.

"It do that a lot?"

Connor shrugs, losing interest in the conversation. "Sometimes, when I say stuff. Mostly it's quiet though." He scoops a bunch of soldiers together, drawing them towards him. "You wanna play?"

Dean gives him a quick smile. "Nah, that's okay, I'll leave you to your game." He ruffles Connor's hair like he just can't help himself, then stands up and takes Sam a little way off. "So, you still think it's not witches? Cause I'm pretty damn sure that toad is actually Connor's big brother."

Sam pulls a face. "I'm not saying I don't agree with you, but turning people into toads? Really?"

Dean shrugs. "So she's a traditionalist. Question is, who is she?"

"It could be a he."

Dean gives him a look. "That was _once_ , and he was playing _poker_ , not re-enacting fairy stories."

"That doesn't mean you should rule it out."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Fine, Mr Gender Equality, still doesn't change the fact we have zero leads."

"We haven't been to see," Sam consults his ridiculous little notebook, "Mrs Greenburg yet."

"Yeah, cause the other two were so helpful."

*

Mrs Greenburg leaves a basin of water out for her toad, and when they ask if she's seen anything out of the ordinary lately she seems to chew her tongue for a minute before she glances out the window and then back to them. "Well, I don't know if I should..." 

"Everything is helpful, Mrs Greenburg," Sam assures her, and she takes a deep breath.

"It's just that I haven't seen Mr Larson's car move since last week, and he...isn't normally one to stay at home." She thins her lips, eye flicking meaningfully between them. "He...I don't think he'd stay at home unless he really really had to."

"Really?" Dean asks, leaning forward and practically _oozing_ I'm A Trustworthy Policeman, Tell Me More.

Mrs Greenburg chews at her tongue again, then finally says, "His wife must be _extraordinarily_ clumsy, to always have so many bruises." Her eyes go to the window again, like she thinks the Larsons will be lurking outside listening to her gossip about them. When she looks back, her eyes are wide, almost pleading; she can't bring herself to say it aloud but she knows, and she wants them to make it stop.

Sam and Dean exchange a look: _motive_.

They say their goodbyes to Mrs Greenburg, then head three doors down to the Larson's, where Mr Larson's silver Ford is languishing in the driveway. The woman who answers their knock does indeed have a yellowed bruise on her cheekbone, and eyes them warily from behind a door still mostly shut. "Can I help you, officers?"

"Yes ma'am," Sam says smoothly. "We hear your husband hasn't been into work all this week, and with all these neighbourhood children going missing we thought it best to check up on any other potentially similar cases."

She swallows, then cracks the door open wider. "Come in."

She doesn't offer them anything, and perches right on the edge of the couch the whole time, eyes on whoever's talking. No, she doesn't know where her husband is, he came home from work on Friday and was gone by Saturday morning, leaving his car, clothes and family behind and taking only his wallet and the clothes he was standing up in. She hasn't noticed anything weird around the neighbourhood either, in relation to the missing kids, and they're just about to take the hints and go when a little girl wanders into the room, staring at them through big, round glasses that make her look like an owl, and clutched in her hand like a security blanket-

Sam's elbow is sharp and pointy in Dean's ribs, and Dean only restrains himself from stepping on his huge gigantor foot in retaliation because he's too busy staring. Holy _shit_.

Mrs Larson sees them looking and gathers her daughter into her lap. "I've told you everything I know, officers, and I'm sure you're very busy with the missing boys." Her voice has gone clipped and flat. "I'm sure you can show yourselves out."

"Fuck fuck _fuck_ ," Dean hisses the moment the door closes behind them. "How're we gonna get to talk to her now? Ugh, that dickwad Balthazar needs his fucking wings plucked, selling shit like that to kids."

"Locusts, boils and blood - is this the plague of frogs, except she got it wrong?" Sam asks as they walk down the garden path, and Dean flings frustrated hands out.

"At least she didn't start killing the firstborn." As soon as they get back to the Impala, he drops down into his seat and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. "Hey Castiel! Got another piece of Moses' staff here, along with a kind of mini-plague of frogs." He waits for a moment, then adds, "You know, anytime you feel like gracing us with your presence."

Cas doesn't materialise though, and after muttering something about not mojoing in on the way and making him crash, Dean drives them back to the motel. They're halfway through supper by the time Cas does finally show, popping up with a rustle of wings right by the table and sending Dean's empty burger wrapper skittering across the tabletop.

"Nice of you to join us," Dean snarks, and Cas ignores him, glancing round the room like a caged bird. He maybe looks even more windswept than usual, but it's pretty hard to tell with Cas.

"Moses' staff, you said?"

"Yeah, like three hours ago. What, you spent so long up there you forgot how to do human time?"

Cas fixes Dean with a look. "I was unavailable at the time. I came as soon as I could."

"Harp playing just gettin' good, huh?"

Cas's stare gets sharper. "No. I was engaged in the defense of one of our strongholds, against numbers far superior to my own. I apologise if that was an inconvenience to you."

Dean clenches his jaw and glances briefly away. "Did you win?"

"I wouldn't be here if I'd lost."

It's only when Sam clears his throat that Dean seems to realise he's been staring Cas, and jerks his eyes away. Cas, as usual, doesn't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary and just transfers his attention over to Sam. "So yeah, we found another piece of Moses' staff, this time belonging to a little girl of maybe about six. Seems she's turned a few neighbourhood boys into toads, and maybe done something to her father too."

"Your buddy Balthazar is a real class act y'know, selling this stuff to kids," Dean adds, folding his arms.

Cas's lips thin. "He was told to stop distributing them."

Dean snorts and takes a swig of beer. "Yeah, looks like that worked real well."

Cas reaches out, and a second later the three of them are standing in what's obviously a little girl's room, everything done in pastel shades and flowers and muted further by the darkness of the room. The girl herself is sitting rigidly up in bed, kitten pajamas making the length of wood in her white-knuckled grip look even more insanely out of place. Trust Cas to get them into something like this; she's gonna scream for her mom, and then they'll all be totally, completely and utterly fucked.

It all happens so fast. 

The kid is eyeballing them, a second away from opening her mouth and screaming the house down, and then Cas starts towards her, hand extended, going for her new toy, and she rears back, eyes wide, swings it up to point at him and yells "NO!" 

There's no bang, no flash of light; just one minute Cas is there, and the next second it's a skinny while cat with tan stripes up its front legs.

For a moment the cat stays frozen, still as fucking stone, and then as a door opens down the hall and footsteps come running it whips around and flings itself at Sam and Dean's feet. Dean feels the weight of it hit his leg, and then they're back in the motel room, blinking in the sudden light and staring at the cat, which is standing over by the beds, tail held stiffly out behind it, and staring down at one of its front paws like it holds the secrets of the universe.

"Uh," Dean says slowly, "Cas?"

The cat's head swings round, that familiar blue gaze leveled expectantly at Dean, who can only return it helplessly.

"Cas, you...okay?" Sam asks, and the cat gives him the best 'what the fuck kind of question is that?' look ever, then opens its mouth and mews, the same kind of rough rasp as Cas's voice. Dean has to admit, for a crazy second there he though it was gonna speak - and judging by the surprised step backwards and flattened ears, so did Cas. He tries again, somehow managing to enunciate the sound, then growls low in his throat and goes still. After a beat, the very end of his tail starts twitching. 

Dean trades a look with Sam and does his best to repress his grin.

*

“Okay,” Sam says, putting his phone back in pocket. “Bobby says he’s sure we can keep Cas entertained until tomorrow when he’s actually awake to help, and if we run out of ideas we should get him catnip and take pictures.”

Dean eyes Cas speculatively where he’s completing his millionth circuit of the room, tail lashing furiously and ears tilted half-back, clearly pissed as hell but stuck like this.

“I uh, I guess I’ll go get some stuff and you can stay with him,” Sam adds, and Dean turns to look at him with raised eyebrows. “Well I mean, _someone_ has to stay with him, we can’t just leave him alone like this.”

“Dude, he’s a _cat_ , not a rampaging psychopath.” They both turn to look at Cas, who’s paused in his pacing to watch them, tail still restless and fur bristling in annoyance, stare as intense as ever and now slightly wild around the edges. A kind of slow, rhythmic crackle starts up, and they realise his claws are raking against the cheap motel carpet. “...Yeah, okay, I’ll stay.”

Dean hands over the Impala’s keys with token reluctance, then goes and sprawls out on the cheap orange couch, which sags under his weight. Cas lurks where he is for a minute, then comes over to crouch between Dean and the ancient TV, claws still kneading at the carpet. Dean flicks it round, seeing if he can find anything that looks remotely interesting, then gives it up as a bad job and leaves it on some news report or other, distracted by the constant movement in his peripheral vision.

“Cas, dude, if you dig right through that we’ll have to pay, you know. I know it’s not like it makes the place look any worse, but you need to chill out. We’re gonna get you back on two legs, okay, but in the mean time you may as well kick back and enjoy a little down time. It’s not like you can go back to the front lines like that, right? Anyway, you look like you could use a break, you seemed kind of twitchy earlier.”

Cas gives him a flat stare, then skulks over and jumps up onto the other end of the couch at Dean’s feet, sitting straight up like an Egyptian statue and curling his tail neatly round his legs. Dean shakes his head and turns his attention back to the TV, where some woman is standing in front of a graph and talking seriously about economic downturns and falling employment rates.

“Yeah well lady, my job’s on an upswing,” he mutters, thinking about the vampire world domination plan and the skinwalker sleeper cells and now this whole ‘Mother’ thing. It doesn’t really bear thinking about for too long though, so he shoves it all aside and zaps the channels round until he finds gunshots, then settles in and turns his brain off. In the corner of his eye, Cas is watching the screen intently.

“Even as a cat, you’ve still got a stick up your ass,” Dean tells him a little while later, and Cas swivels his head slowly round to look at him, eyes narrowing in what’s either irritation or puzzlement. Probably both. Dean nudges a careful foot into his chest. “ _Relax_ , dude. At least do the sphinx thing lying down. I’m pretty sure we’re not allowed pets in here whatever, but we’re _definitely_ not allowed pets that act weird. This is _Salem_ , okay, I’ll probably get burned at the stake if they see you acting like-” and waves a hand at him. 

Cas flicks a dismissive ear, turning back to the TV. A beat later though, he does fold experimentally down on himself, tucking his front legs under his chest and looking like a rather boney cushion. The look he shoots Dean is definitely smug.

*

Sam comes back with a couple of WalMart bags and a burger, which he drops in the middle of the table.

“Aw Sammy, you got me a snack!” Dean coos, and Sam elbows his reaching arm out the way.

“’S for Cas, dude. Figured maybe he needs to eat now, different body and all”

“You couldn’t have gotten him, oh, I don’t know, some _catfood_ maybe?”

Sam levels a look at him. “Would you want to eat that stuff if you were suddenly turned into a cat?” Dean grumbles but subsides, and they both look over at Cas, who’s standing up with his ears pricked forward like a dog. “Uh, you can just dig in, dude,” Sam says, and Cas scuttles the length of the couch, leaps down off the arm and back up into one of the chairs and up onto the table, and tucks right in, swiping the top bun away with a paw and chowing down the burger and cheese. The best part is watching him hook the meat in closer with his claws, and the cheese, which gets stuck all round his face.

“Guess that answers that,” Dean remarks, not taking his eyes off Cas in case he misses something, and Sam nods.

“Guess we know who he learned his table manners from too,” he says pointedly, and Dean smacks him in the side.

When Cas finishes, he sits contentedly back on his haunches and starts fastidiously licking at his claws, presumably to get the burger grease off them. “Dude, that’s definitely not your biggest problem,” Dean informs him, leaning forward and wiping at the strings of cheese stuck to his fur with his thumbs. Cas starts a little, then closes his eyes and lets him, sitting still as a statue until Dean’s done. 

*

there would have been dean getting increasingly comfortable with cat!Cas, and telling him "y'know, i kinda like you like this - you're a lot more expressive, and it's way easier to figure out what the fuck you're thinking about", probably while cas is sprawled over his chest purring and being stroked. balthazar would have turned up and changed him back, eventually - though not before suggesting a kiss, just to see if dean'll do it. he does.


	8. 8.11 coda - of monster sex & religion

"But dude, I still can't believe I almost made it with a fairy!" Charlie says later in the bar, wide-eyed and a little smug. Her cocktail umbrella is tucked behind her ear, a splash of brighter colour in her fiery hair.

"Yeah well, welcome to the club," Dean answers, tipping his beer at her, grin blossoming across his face. "Sam here slept with a werewolf once."

Sam splutters into his drink. "Jesus Dean, it was _once_ and it was like, eight years ago."

"...Wow, really?"

"And anyway," Sam continues, brandishing his glass at Dean and ignoring his interruption, " _you_ slept with an _angel_."

"Touché," Dean agrees amiably, taking another swallow of beer and smirking at Charlie round the rim of the bottle. "Though she wasn't, y'know, powered up at the time."

"Wait," Charlie interjects in a hiss, "are you saying angels are _real_? That God and, and eveything," and she throws her arms around, "it's all _true_? Cause I feel like I should be in the nearest church now appologising for not really believing any of that crap," her eyes dart from side to side like some angel's gonna pop up and smite her, "and I _really_ don't wanna live in a world where those Bible-thumping assholes are right."

"Hey, woah," Dean reassures her, a hand on her arm, "chill. Angels are real but they're 99% douchbags, and jury's still out on on the Big Cahuna himself. Bible's...uh, well, it's kind true in some bits-"

Charlie's face goes hard and she pulls her arm out from under Dean's hand. "Which bits?"

"Hey," Sam says, low, leaning towards her and catching her eyes but not reaching out to touch, "Charlie, we've never met an angel that gave a crap about Leviticus, okay? In fact, from what we know they don't really recognise gender at all, cause they're all basically just like...wavelengths of light in their natural state."

Charlie eyes him warily, but nods. 

"I mean, most of the time we've known them they've been kind proccupied with war and shit," Dean adds, and Sam kicks him under that table. "Ow! What-?"

"I wish we could get our-" and Sam hesitates, cause he isn't sure he can even name what Cas is to them anymore, "-angel friend down here to tell you that himself, but he's...busy right now." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Dean's face shut down, shielded behind another pull from the bottle.

" _You know an angel?_ "

"Uh, yeah," and he manages a short little laugh at Charlie's incredulity. "Cas" (and he almost fills in the rest of the angel's name before he remembers it may well summon the guy and they still don't know what's up with him right now) "he's, uh, he's the 1% who isn't a douche."

Dean mutters something into his bottle.

"Oh my god. Does he have wings?" Charlie demands, reanimated now. "A halo? A harp?"

Sam grins, shooting a look at Dean that isn't returned. "Uh, yeah he's got wings, but not...in this plane? We see the shadows of them sometimes, when he's really pissed off. The rest, I honestly have no idea, though if you met him you'd understand why it's...kinda hard to imagine."

"Oh my god," Charlie breathes. Then, after a moment: "Wait, does that mean _Lucifer's_ real too?"

Sam can't help his involuntary flinch at the name, and Dean's foot knocks against his under the table. "Yeah," he says, taking over so Sam can take a drink and get his heartrate back down. "There was this whole apocalypse thing a while ago, we got kinda caught up in it." He says it so nonchalantly, Sam has to swallow back a laugh, though it feels like a stone trapped in his throat. "And yeah, demons are real too, but no they don't have devil horns and pitchforks. Mostly they're just sarcastic sone of bitches who talk too much and get themselves ganked." There's a pause, then: "Or try and seduce Sam."

He means Lilith but Ruby lurks in the gaps between the words. He's making the effort to get the conversation back onto less fraught topics though, so Sam allows it. "Key word being 'try'," he says dryly, and Dean shoots him a sideways glance of apology.

"Wow, so your milkshake brings all the monsters to the yard, huh?" Charlie asks, quirking an eyebrow as she takes a sip of her cocktail, umbrella threataning to fall out of her hair until she holds it in place.

"Something like that," Sam says, ducking his head and thinking of Amy and his first kiss.

"Though," Dean says, taking another swing from the bottle and finishing it, "I really think we're overlooking Bobby here. I mean, his doctor lady was a _tentacle monster_."

Charlie chokes.

"Possessing a human," Sam clarifies at her round eyes. "He didn't know at the time."

Charlie closes her eyes, sagging in relief. "Oh thank god," (she looks guilty for a second, then shrugs it off) "after everything else you've told me I don't think I could handle tentacle porn being real too."

Dean suddenly becomes very interested in his empty beer bottle.

*

they go on to talk about Charlie's fandom friend who was super into that incest-y fandom - hey, no judgement - based on a cult book series about two brothers hunting monsters, which was never Charlie's cup of tea but has nevertheless reached her via fandom osmosis and is now sounding kind of familiar. This would have, i think, led to the revelation of just how much more canon has been e-published - by becky, so not strictly going back on chuck's word! - since The Real Ghostbusters, and maaaybe charlie wondering aloud about the subtext


	9. End!verse - Dean & Risa

“Dean,” Risa says from behind him, quiet but firm, and Dean resolutely finishes fastening his jeans before he turns towards her, admitting she’s caught him. “You- are you okay?”

Dean pulls his t-shirt over his head. “Oh, I’m just peachy.”

It scares him a little that he knows her well enough to hear her rolling her eyes. “No, okay, that was a pretty stupid question. I _meant_ , do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Dean says shortly, sitting down so he can pull on his socks.

A sigh, and she sits up behind him, sheets rustling. “Dean. Look, I- I used to be a psychologist, before. Maybe I can help. Especially now, with Cas laid up - don’t think I haven’t noticed how much worse it’s gotten since he got hurt; he’s your second-in-command, you need him and he can’t be there right now, it must be tough-”

Dean laughs, short and bitter. “You haven’t been to see him recently, have you? He’s not ‘laid up’, Risa, his leg’s fine. He’s just too stoned to move.”

“Well, he’s on some pretty strong meds, Dean. He broke his foot, that’s really not something you can just pop some aspirin for-”

“Yeah, and he sure as hell ain’t. He’s on the good stuff, and he’s not planning on stopping any time soon.”

“Dean-”

“Dammit Risa, I _know_ the guy, okay? I’ve known him for longer than any of you, and I know shit _about_ him that no one else would even _believe_. I-” Dean scrubs a hand though his hair, helpless and furious with it. His voice drops to an angry whisper. “It’s just, he’s _Cas_ , he’s meant to be the one pulling _me_ up on this shit, not the other way round, and if he’s gonna be too busy gettin’ high to keep an eye on me then I don’t-” He cuts himself off, punching a fist into the mattress and grinding it in. He leaves it like than for a moment then pulls it away. "I can manage without him, it's fine."

“Perhaps it’s time you start delegating to others,” Risa says carefully, pretending she hasn’t heard the naked emotion in his voice. “Just because Cas is...out of action doesn’t mean you’re alone, Dean. There are other people who can help: me, Chuck, Ben, Garett, Kaleigh... I know it’s not the same, but we can take some of the pressure off you, stop you from feeling so...overwhelmed.”

Dean snorts. “Oh, don’t you worry about me, sweetheart. The weight of the world’s nothing new.”

“But you don’t have to do it alone,” Risa says.


	10. Disney AUs / dc_everafter ideas

_the little mermaid_

cas rescues dean (from a storm? a car crash?) but all dean remembers is dark hair and wings, a voice saying "you're safe now, dean" and a hand pressing to his shoulder. he goes to zachariah, who takes his grace [and his voice, b/c blah blah with his grace goes his true voice?] and sets him down on earth. misadventures ensue, esp as cas's friends anna, gabriel and balthazar are offering helpful suggestions via angel radio for making dean fall in love with him. then dean finds michael on the beach, dark haired and smiling at him and the grace round his neck makes the handprint come up white on his shoulder. sam is unconvinced, seeing how cas reacts when he finds out, but dean is so bobby starts organising the official betrothal announcement or w/e. michael finds a way to like, lock cas in his rooms or something, and without wings he can't fly out and the other three can't help cause they're unvesseled, but somehow he gets out anyway and crashes the not!wedding and rips the grace away from michael's neck and dean realises it was him that saved him...then zachariah pops up all "castiel, don't interfere in things that don't concern you," and blah blah blah battle where dean uses cas's angel sword to kill zachariah. and then they get married and live happily ever after.

*

_the prince of egypt_

castiel is firm in the belief that humans are scum, the earth is corrupt and the apocalypse is the best thing for it. when the croatoan virus is released he dispassionately watches it spread across the earth like a stain, and shakes his head at the small and dwindling pockets of human reisitance. then raphael is sent to fetch the human dean winchester, who is to be michael's vessel on earth, but he is the opposite of the righteous man he is meant to be, spitting and swearing and attacking any angel who comes near him. they leave him in a holding cell, but he overpowers one of the guards and escapes, and for some reason he can't name castiel, when he feels the power of the manifesting door and goes to investigate, lets him go. the same curiosity prompts him to follow the human back to earth, where he loses track of him but encounters anna and balthazar, both of whom he had been told were dead for their rebellion. he tries to ignore them, but they were his friends and they urge him to question why zachariah told him they were dead. he confronts michael, who finally tells him that his ex-friends were dangerous and cas was in danger of falling ("oh castiel, they were clearly broken"), but he's better than them. cas is confused, because anna used to be head of his garrison and a good, faithful soldier, as was balthazar. michael tries to show him that the rebels are scum by letting him watch the torture of samandriel, who's been found to have links with the fallen, but cas can't stand it and, when his protests fall on deaf ears, kills the torturer. stunned and afraid, he flees and hides himself on earth, subduing his grace with various illegal rituals - only to be picked up by dean winchester and his brother, who investigate this kind of weird shit for a living. dean is sceptical at first, but sam seems delighted that they have an angel on their side and insists on keeping him. cas learns how to be human in this little hunter enclave, and eventually dean comes round and they fall in love. 

[then one day joshua shows up and informs him that this is not on and restores his grace, and then cas and dean and sam go to meet up with anna and balthazar and gabriel and go up to heaven to try and reason with raphael. raphael basically laughs in their faces and sends a garrison of angels down to kill the rest of the hunters, stabs gabriel and cordons off the other angels, and gently kills sam and dean via a variety of horrific diseases, but their souls all go pouring into cas and the dead gabriel winks at him and suddenly he's got all this power and he and gabriel anihalate raphael, scourge the earth of croats and declare a ceasefire on the apocalypse. then joshua steps in and revives everyone and they all live happily ever after.]

*

_hercules_

cas is just a baby, playing with gabriel and anna and his flying horse balthazar on earth's beach when a bunch of high-level demons ambush them and somehow poison cas to remove all but one tiny sliver of his grace, then leave him on earth. his freaky healing abilities disturb the other kids and allow him to get beaten up with no evidence, but one day, when he dawdles home and passes the church, he goes inside to ask why he can't just be normal. gabriel is the one who answers the prayer and tells him what he is and reintroduces him to balthazar and tells him that due to the circumstances the only way he can restore his grace is to become a 'true hero'. he is sent to bobby singer, who is grumpy and disillusioned and reluctant until cas mentions his name. after a year or so of training, bobby declares him ready, and they're heading vaguely for detroit when they see a struggle below. that would be the winchester's fighting a minotaur, and though cas is laughed off when he offers to help, he is the one that eventually kills it. balthazar takes an instant dislike to dean and an instant like to dean's horse imp. when they get to detroit, there's two kids trapped in a rockfall, and while sam and dean get them out and to safety, cas has to face the hydra. neither winchester is happy about that, but bobby tells them the kid needs experience and they can step in if he dies; then it looks like he does and they charge in, and then cas heals and the three of them manage to kill it together. they become famous, and sam starts dating this chick ruby, who dean mutters mutinously is just a fame whore; dean and cas end up hanging out together a lot as a result, and neither of them really minds. sam skips out on some stuff one day, and in a fit of rebellion dean gets cas to follow his example. when a furious bobby finally finds them he starts yelling about inter-office relationships and idjits and hauls cas away to do everything he missed (the horses can only take two at a time and balthazar flat-out refused to go after cas) and when he comes back dean is talking to alastair about paying off his debt and sam's soul and giving alastair cas. bobby waits for him to leave then pretends he didn't see and takes dean back, then goes to tell cas. cas doesn't believe him and thinks he's trying to break them up, so bobby throws his hands up and says he washes his hands of all these idjits and storms out. that is, of course, when alastair appears and reveals it's all true, that sam got hurt on a hunt and died and dean made a deal to save him, which was to bring alastair cas. cas offers himself up and has that last shard of grace removed in exchange for dean's safety. alastair and his demons and the leviathans stage a takeover of heaven, while cas is chained up and guarded by hellhounds. dean went to sam and told him everything and sam realised ruby had just been keeping him occupied, and they take a horse each, dean going after cas on balthazar and sam after bobby on imp. dean finds cas and talks him into fighting, with him and balthazar helping, but both of them get hurt and dean especially badly, stomach ripped open. sam and bobby arrive just in time to watch dean die, and cas gets that bit of grace back. it allows him entry to heaven without being dead, so he helps lead the resistance until alastiar yells at him that's he's got a swell consolation prize and smokes out. cas goes plunging through the hellgate and into hell to retrieve dean's soul, and finally proves himself a true hero, emerging from the pit shining bright and cradling dean's soul in his arms. he still has a hand free to punch alastair in the face though (or possibly sam's there and does it), and then to cast him down to the mercy of the souls he tortured. then he restores dean to life and gets lifted to heaven, where he chooses to remain on earth. and then everyone lives happily ever after.

*

_shrek 4_

someone got hold of chuck's books and everyone knows the winchesters now. Bobby's been besieged with people hoping to get a glimpse of them - and they don't even bother to pretend to have car trouble! - and there's always the whispering and the squeaking girls and sometimes the clapping (oh god the clapping) and the hotel fund so they "can get a good night's sleep for once, poor babies" and people hitting on Cas- actually no, that's quite funny, but dean would still like his old life back please, damnit. fortunately, crowley never stopped being king of the crossroads, he just became king of everything else too, and he likes dean enough to offer him a good deal - one day of his life in exchange for said life in the full. UNfortunately, that one day was dean's conception date and it never happened. sam is an only child, and when YED showed up mary was waiting so he took john instead. mary went to live with the harvelles, and when Bill died she and ellen ran the bar together (all of the 'sam has two mommies' jokes go here). Jo is like a sister to him. he's got standford, and jess, and no demon blood, though this unfortch makes him the michael sword instead, though he doesn't know that. theeen the seals start breaking and this douche zachariah shows up and starts lecturing him about fate and destiny and stuff and tells him he has to kill lilith to stop everything, so he does but o noes, light everywhere! (the righteous man who begins it is the only one who can end it) fast forward to the day dean's turned up in, which is in the middle of the apocalypse - weird shit going down, lucifer wearing nick (or jake? or adam?), and the little band of renegade angels, winchesters and harvelles have a lead on detroit and are taking a moment to appreciate their last night on earth. dean tries to convinve them it's a bad idea, talks about hellhounds and the freakin' DEVIL but they're determined and know him only as this intense hunter who turned up the other day. blah blah save cas, true love's kiss etc, and the proper timeline is restored. and then they live pretty happily ever after.


	11. TFW meet the Endless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part also got [posted on tumblr](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/35368687206) a while ago.

The guy is taller than Sam, and honestly that's saying something.

"Woah," Dean says when they're first introduced. "How's it feel to be the short one for once, Sammy?"

"Ha ha," Sam answers, breaking the handshake and stepping back so the guy can offer his hand to Dean. 

"Red hair - you must be a Weasley," Dean says cheerfully to the guy, who booms - like, actually booms - a laugh and grins, teeth white and even.

"Ollie. Bobby was kind enough to let me stay here for a bit in exchange for helping him out with a few things here and there."

"Man's handy with a hammer and no mistake," Bobby agrees from behind them. "And unlike you two idjits, he don't assume bed and board means he gets to criticize my cooking."

"Trust me, when you've eaten what I have, cooking such as Bobby's is to be savoured indeed," Ollie says, and then there's that clatter of wings and Cas is suddenly right in front of him, stumbling a little like he landed in a rush and with his arms half-spread like he's trying to shield Sam and Dean from view.

Dean opens his mouth, trying desperately to think of a way to explain this away, when Cas says, low and dangerous, "Get away from them."

Ollie laughs. Full on, body-shaking, head thrown back to howl at the heavens _laughs_. And then, wiping tears from his eyes, he reaches out and pats Cas on the shoulder, and Cas's actually sways like his knees almost buckled.

"Oh little angel, your bravery does you great credit. I'm not here to hurt them, merely to warn them that my siblings want a word. You know I gave up my realm long ago."

Cas sort of deflates, like a child caught in the wrong, head bowing forward. "Forgive me, _Odqvasb_."

"Oh, now none of that," Ollie says, waving a hand dismissively. "If you can't bring yourself to use less than the old names, then Olethros will suffice. What name do you go by, defiant one?"

"Castiel, Lord," Cas says quietly, still not looking him in the eye, and Ollie hums, examining him thoughtfully.

"Of course you do."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean asks, finally getting over his shock that this overgrown hobo makes Cas mumble like a schoolkid.

Ollie raises his eyebrows. "Surely you know that recent events have been much prophesied, Dean. The apocalypse is not an event taken lightly."

"But Cas said- I thought we weren't supposed to- Zachariah and Gabriel were always talking about fate, like it was predetermined, and I thought we changed it?"

"There are...clearence levels to this sort of thing," Ollie says, eyes twinkling. "The archangels were reading from about level two."

"And you?" Sam asks warily, and Ollie grins. 

"Level ten. About. Maybe level seven hundred."

"What _are_ you?" Sam breathes, and Ollie chuckles as Cas turns to look at him with wide eyes.

"He's...decimation. Utter ruin. The end of all things. Total anihilation."

Dean frowns. "I thought we already met Death."

"You have," Cas says heavily. "This is not Death. This is her brother, Destruction."

"Wait," Dean says, "'her'? Cause I distinctly remember that-"

"So that's why you came in for the landing like someone put a pirhana in with the goldfish," Bobby says over him, and Cas shakes his head.

"More like a Megalodon. Something ancient and utterly beyond reason or sentiment."

"Hey now," Ollie objects, sounding wounded. "I'm right here. And I'll have you know I put a stop to all that when I left."

"But it still follows in your wake, Lord, because it's all that you are," Cas says, eyes and voice dropping again, and Ollie sighs.

"Which is why I won't linger, now that these two are here. Just a friendly warning, boys - the rest of my family take their roles very seriously, and you aren't necessarily their favourite people right now. And if you are, you probably don't want to be." He takes a step back and tips Bobby a salute. "I enjoyed working for you, Bobby Singer. And your cooking is truly delicious." He turns to Cas. "Have a care, Castiel. You cannot keep my brothers and sisters from what they seek, and you would be unwise to try."

"The Winchesters are my responsibility, Lord," Cas counters, chin coming up and looking him briefly in the eye for the first time. "I would be remiss if I didn't seek to protect them from such elemental forces as your family."

"But you can't," Ollie says simply. "We are the fundamental forces of the universe, Castiel. There is no stopping us."

Cas doesn't answer, but he stays rigid, shoulders straight and chin up, and Destruction smiles at him as he slings a ratty bag over one shoulder and heads for Bobby's gates.

*

Dean looks up from his pie when the other guy slides into the booth opposite him. Dude looks like he had an unfortunate baking accident, everything white from his mop of hair to his clothes to his skin - except his eyes, which are black as the night sky and have glimmering depths Dean's afraid to focus on in case it turns out they _are_ the night sky. 

"Is the pie to your satisfaction?" the guy asks, and Dean nods, swallows his mouthful and elaborates in case this guy takes offense easy. 

"Yeah, yeah it's delicious."

The guy smiles, just a little, a small curve of the lips. "You can call me Daniel. I believe my brother forewarned you about me?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"How is he? Does he seem well?"

Dean blinks. "Uh, yeah, he seemed...good. For a god, or whatever the fuck you guys are. No offense."

Daniel considers him thoughtfully. "You know what it is to have a brother give up his responsibilities and leave to pursue his own desires, Dean. Destruction no longer wished to watch humanity scramble towards its own ruin, to have to shoulder the burden of the multitudes of innocent lives lost."

Dean pokes a piece of pie around the plate with his fork. "You mean he left cause of us. The apocalypse. But we stopped it, so can't he come back now?"

"No," Daniel corrects, "he left because learned men began to question the world around them, to examine how matter is constructed and what it is made of, and with the discovery of the atom came the inevitable invention of the atom bomb."

"Oh."

Daniel's little smile flashes again. "Yes, 'oh'. Contrary to what the angels may have told you, Dean Winchester, not everything is, in fact, about you."

"I don't-"

"The apocalypse hinged upon you and your brother, the choices you made. For a while, it seemed to you as though the fate of the world was yours to bear. But that's over now."

Dean scrubs a hand through his hair. "Uh, yeah, about that. Ol- Destruction said you guys sorta...had a bone to pick with us. But if you knew what was gonna happen all along...?"

"I think it's best to let my brother answer that," Daniel says, rising. "Come, I'll take you to him."

"Can I just-? This pie is _really good_ ," Dean says, and shovels the rest of the slice into his mouth at once. Daniel looks somewhere between amused and horrified, an expression he's obviously borrowed from Sam. And speaking of- "Where's my brother, anyway?" It comes out mostly as pie crumbs, but Daniel seems to understand just fine.

"Sam will meet us there. I expect your angel will find a way to you as well, in due time."

Dean makes a heroic effort at swallowing. "Cas? He isn't gonna get punished for, for trespassing or something is he?" 

"Our realms are not shut to angel-kind unless we require them to be," Daniel says, which isn't an answer at all, but then his fingers close around Dean's wrist, light and cool, and suddenly they're not in the diner any more, but a garden, paths winding away in every direction and flowers clustering neatly and colourfully alongside them.

"Nice," Dean says, twisting to take it all in, and from behind him - and seriously, _why_ do things _always_ turn up behind him? - a strong, certain voice like turning pages and history dates says, "Thank you, Dean Winchester."

This man is robed and hooded, eyes in shadow and a large book cradled to his chest and bound in chains. Neither of these things exactly inspires confidence. Dean opens his mouth to ask _So which one are you?_ , but the pale face turns towards him and the man answers him before he speaks.

"I am Destiny." He shifts his attention to Daniel. "Thank you brother, you may go."

Daniel inclines his head, mouth maybe quirking up a tiny bit, and promptly vanishes. 

"So..." Dean says, desperately scrambling for something to say, and this time Destiny lets him talk aloud. "Destiny, Destruction, Death...and Daniel?"

"Daniel is the name he prefers," Destiny says, a little sniffily if you ask Dean. "Nevertheless, he is Dream."

"Huh. No wonder that pie was so awesome. So I'm...dreaming, right now?"

"Your mortal body is asleep, yes."

*

alerted by some kind of angel alarm, Cas would have turned up, found the winchesters' souls missing (that's what destiny was about to tell dean), and freaked the fuck out, even knowing what had probably happened. meanwhile, dean would have met up with sam at destiny's, then gone on to meet desire (who beams at dean, all dark hair and lean lines), despair (who puts warm hands on dean's shoulders and stares sadly at him, then pats him and lets him go only to go and shake sam gently, pointedly, and touch his cheek, ring catching at his skin), and delerium, who's the one who finally lets cas through before turning to sam and telling him cheerfully that the cold man says hi, but she sent him away because he made her go all shivery and purple and she only wants to be green.


	12. post-5.03 - girl!Dean and Cas' first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should really listen to "Skin" by Rihanna while you read this, because I was.

Dee doesn’t realise she’s made the decision until the Impala’s purring down a dark road, flanked by trees either side and lit only by her headlights. Cas in the passenger seat is just so damn _distracting_ , tie loosened and shirt barely unbuttoned but it’s more skin than he’s ever shown before and she just wants to...

There’s a rest area up ahead and fuck it, that’ll do, it’s not like anyone’ll be out driving up here this late. She spins the wheel and slides them right in, turning off the engine and taking a moment to listen to the silence, Cas’s quiet breathing and the ticking of the cooling metal. Then she turns in the seat to look at him.

“So I was gonna wait, be all rose petals and like, champagne and an actual bed about this, but god Cas, you-” she takes a deep breath, almost laughs at Cas’s face, the slight frown as he tries to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. Oh, he’ll get it in a second alright. “Fuck it.” And she leans over and kisses him.

She feels him start, head jerking back against the headrest, nails scratching against the seat as he clenches his fists, so she pulls away. Ball’s in his court now anyway.

“Dee...” He’s staring at her - what’s new? - but it’s hard to read him in the dark like this; all she can see is the glitter of his eyes and the flicker of movement as he licks his lips. God, he has no clue how hot he is, she kind of hates him. One hand comes up, so careful, and just brushes her cheek, and she turns her face into it, hearing him huff in surprise. His palm settles against her jaw, thumb ghosting over the skin just under her lower lip, and she dips her head and catches it with her mouth. His breath stutters.

“Back seat,” she says, releasing his thumb with a gentle nip of teeth, and stretches over him so she can pop the door. He makes a quiet little amused noise, and then there’s that rustle of displaced air and he’s there. She twists so she can glare at him, and even in the dark she can hear him smile.

She uses the door just so he remembers that not everyone can just zap themselves around, sliding in and pulling the door shut after her then wriggling herself over into his lap, feeling him twitch. She knows he’s making that face again, can see his wide eyes now hers have adjusted to the dark, can feel how he isn’t breathing and the tense way he’s holding himself, like he thinks she’s gonna smother him with her boobs or something.

“Cas, chill. Sex is not scary. It’s actually pretty awesome.” She cups his face in both hands and kisses him again, still without tongue, and he responds this time, mimicking her, his body gradually losing some of its tension. Why’d she have to get the uptight virgin angel? Oh right - so she got to do this. “Also, it’s _me_ ,” she murmurs, forehead against his, “don’t tell me you’ve faced down Alastair and Raphael but you’re scared of _me_.”

“No,” he breathes against her mouth, absolute, and she has to kiss him again.

Either Cas is a fast learner or she’s an excellent teacher; either way, he gets good fast and then she just _has_ to get her hands in that messy hair and suck at his stupid lower lip, lick into his mouth. She’d assumed his hair would be brittle and unnatural, full of product to keep in in that crazy, windswept style he seems to like so much, but it turns out that that’s just its natural state, made worse by all his globe-hopping in search of God, and she can scrunch it between her fingers and feel him rumble in approval against her chest.

His hands are still loose at his sides though, and seriously, he is such a _nerd_. She grabs them and sets them firmly on her hips, drags them up her sides, under her shirt and t-shirt and over skin, and he groans, hands curling just under her bra and thumbs dipping over her ribs like he’s counting to make sure he got them all right. She’s about to make some smartass remark along those lines, but then he slides his whole hands down over her stomach, slow and sweeping and spreading warmth in their wake, and she settles for biting gently at his lip instead. 

She shrugs out of her shirt soon after that, then attacks the trenchcoat, and Cas helps her but seems kind of bemused about it. She sits back and looks down at him, both coat and jacket stuck halfway down his arms.

“You do know clothes have to come off for this to work, right?”

“I was under the impression it wasn’t a necessity,” Cas says, moonlight catching the slight curve of his mouth, and she snorts and resumes shoving his sleeves down and off.

“Yeah, well it is in this case. Not getting naked your first time is just tacky.”

“I wouldn’t want you to think I was tacky,” Cas agrees, still amused, and she narrows her eyes at him, then drops her hand from his shoulder and squeezes him where he’s half-hard, making him hitch a breath and twitch up into her touch. 

“Smartasses don’t get laid,” she informs him, probably undermining it by rolling her hips down against him on her next breath. He curls his fingers, clutching at her waist and leaning up to kiss her again.

She scrabbles blindly at his tie, pulling it further and further open until it finally comes free, at which point she drops it unceremoniously down onto the floor. Cas has finally gotten the idea and her t-shirt is rucked up around his wrists as his hands roam up and down her sides and over her back, and she lifts her arms so he can strip it off. That, at least, he understands, and his eyes go gratifyingly wide when she immediately twists back to get her bra undone and pulls that off too.

She goes still above him, letting him look (cause jesus, this is the first pair of tits he’s ever seen up close and personal), and she doesn’t even have to prompt him before he reaches carefully up and cups them in his hands, thumbs sweeping out over her nipples apparently on instinct. She closes her eyes and pushes into it and Cas, completely of his own volition, tips his head up and brushes his mouth over the swell of her left breast, making her eyes snap open in surprise and looking down to find him watching her, eyes dark and unblinking. She hears herself exhale, shaky and helpless, then spreads one hand through his hair and watches him close his eyes and surrender to it. 

His eyelashes tickle and his stubble is rougher, but he lets one hand slip free so his mouth can close over one nipple, and then that hand slides up over her shoulder and down over the scar on her arm and all she can do is gasp, everything amplified and suddenly so amazing that she’s pretty sure she’s gonna come from just this.

“Cas, jesus, can you just-” and she gropes for his other hand, shoves it down between her legs, curves it against the denim and rocks down against it, feeling him match her rhythm, press his fingers up against her. He breaks off from kissing at the side of her breast to look down, pulls away from her grip and pops her jeans open, then slips his hand carefully inside. 

His fingers are warm and she snaps her hand back around his wrist, already so close, and just grinds down against them as her thighs start to shake. Cas, miracle that he is, just goes with it, fingers molding against her cunt with just the right pressure and palm right fucking perfect against her clit, and she fucks down against his hand and tries to remember to bite back all her usual seriously blasphemous curses as pleasure goes slamming up her spine.

When she regains control over her body she pushes herself back upright and finds Cas watching her with his usual intent expression, like she’s fascinating but inexplicable. She can’t help laughing a little.

“Wait ‘til you have one, Einstein. So, you know how this works, right?” She lets go of his wrist and his fingers slip against her, sending another shiver through her.

“Yes Dee, I am aware of the mechanics of human intercourse.”

“Well jesus, if you’re still talking like that then you clearly aren’t,” she says, and leans forward to cup her hand over him, squeezing a little. Cas’s whole body jerks, a breathless little noise escaping him and his fingers twitching against her, and she rolls absently down against them and hums, smoothing her palm up over his length and back down, then looks up and grins at him. “Clothes off then, Mr Expert.”

His hand slides out of her open jeans and she swings off him so she can wriggle out of them, then fishes her wallet out of the back pocket and gets the condom out. Cas has somehow managed to get everything else off in the same time, and she raises her eyebrows and slings her leg back over his.

“Impressive.”

She wraps her hand around Cas’s dick and he shudders, bucking up, and she resettles herself and smirks down at him. Her thumb skates over the slick head before she really gets her hand back round him and strokes. He hisses out her name, head falling back against the seat, and she does it again. His hand curls tight across her thigh, fingers digging in every time she palms the head of his cock, and his whole body pushes greedily into it.

When she stops his eyes go from lazily half-shut to fully open and confused. “You know what this is?” she asks, waving the condom packet at him, and he blinks up at it and shakes his head. “Wow, they really skip on the sex ed up there, huh? It _means_ ,” and she tears it deftly open, dropping the packet to the floor, “that in nine months there won’t be any cute little baby angels running around.”

He frowns. “I can ensure you won't conceive if you don’t want to.”

“I really don’t. And that’s cute, but I think I’ll stick with what I know. I’ve heard that one before.” 

He twitches his hips up as she rolls the condom on and looks like he thinks it’s a total waste of time, but then she’s going up on her knees and positioning him just right and sliding back down, and he makes a choked-off noise and digs his fingers into her thighs hard enough to leave bruises. 

“Easy there, Casanova,” she says, amused and breathless, as she settles, and then she snickers. “Heh, _Cas_ anova.” 

He just stares at her though, eyes wide and dark and thumbs helplessly feathering over the curve of her hipbones, and she has to mentally readjust. All the guys she picks up on the road are in it for fun, just like her, and she hasn’t been with a virgin since...since she deflowered Tom Berringer when she was seventeen. And Cas...it’s already pretty obvious that he thinks she’s the best thing that ever happened to him, and it’s kind of her fault for not thinking that taking an angel’s virginity would be like, a cosmically huge deal, especially when it’s _this_ angel, but it really _isn’t_. 

It’s just sex, even if she is pretty awesome at it, and he’s got no business looking at her like she’s doing something incredible, like she’s just cured his blindness and taken him outside to show him the stars.

Both of Cas’s hands come up and cradle her face, smoothing back through her hair and freeing it from its tie. Most of it’s already come loose in all the uh, excitement, but now the rest of it tumbles slowly down to brush her shoulders, and Cas strokes his fingers through it and looks at her like she’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. She allows it for a second or two, then ducks her head and starts to move. 

Cas isn’t gonna let her get away that easy though, and his voice is impressively steady, if lower than she’s ever heard it, when he says, “Dee.” 

She kisses him to shut him up, both hands in his hair and using every filthy trick she knows. He goes with it willingly enough, stupidly hot stifled noises humming in the back of his throat as she sucks on his tongue and tips his head back and up, makes him work for it.

Apparently he’s not that easily distracted though, cause one minute she’s rolling her hips down, letting his hands on her hips guide her right, and the next thing she knows she’s been effortlessly flipped sideways onto her back, one of Cas’s hands behind her head to stop it hitting the door and the other curled over the damn scar again. And apart from the fact that the change in angle has her convulsively tightening her legs around his hips, pressing her heels into the backs of his thighs to urge him on, she now has nowhere else to look but at him.

His pupils are blown wide, the usual disconcerting blue all swallowed up, but the intensity is still there. And despite the fact that he’s now fucking her like a damn pro, all she can think about is whether afterwards he’s gonna give her that soulful look like he can’t understand why she doesn’t look in the mirror every morning and cry at her own awesomeness.

“I thought this was supposed to be enjoyable,” Cas murmurs, and she quirks an eyebrow at him, summons a smirk and sinks one hand into his hair again, listens to the hitching noise he makes when she tightens herself around him, low and choked, and leans up to bite at his lower lip. He kisses her willingly, the hand behind her head twisting to wrap her hair around his fingers, mimicking what she’s doing to him, and she tips her head up into it; as long as he isn’t trying to yank it out, they’re good. 

She isn’t gonna get off like this - it feels good, really good, but it’s not quite enough - but she has already come once tonight, so it’s only fair to return the favour. 

And Cas is losing it, slow but sure; breathing faster, little catches to every exhale, and every thrust a little shorter as he presses himself in closer to her, forehead against hers. She’s never seen him sweat before, never even heard him breathe hard, but under her palms his skin is hot and she can feel the flex and curl of his spine, the swell and fall of his ribs. 

“Dee-,” he says, low and barely even a word, and she slides her hands back up and down over his shoulderblades as his eyes shiver closed. “Dee, _Dee_ -”

“Yeah Cas, ‘m here, I got you,” she murmurs back, tightening her arms around him and arching up to wrap her legs higher up on his hips. “I got you baby, c’mon.” Something about the shift of her hips has suddenly got her twisting up into it, instinctive and mindless as Cas hits some sweet spot that gets her shaking with it, 

Cas’s next breath stutters and stops, his whole body winding tight under her hold, and then he makes a low noise that could have been her name or Enochian swearing or anything at all and-

*

[and then later, after Cas learns to eat her out]

“You know this doesn’t change anything, right? I mean, the Apocalypse is still happening, Lucifer’s still destroying stuff for shits and giggles and we’re gearing up for the big showdown; we’re not gonna go get married and ride off into the sunset together or anything.”

Cas’s eyebrows furrow. “I wasn’t aware that was an option.”

“Well...good, cause it isn’t.”

“Dee,” Cas says slowly, holding her eyes, “I am aware that intercourse is not always meaningful.”

Dee huffs. “Yeah, you can say that again. But I mean, this isn’t- I’m not trying to pretend I haven’t wanted to fuck you for uh, a while now, cause I have.” She runs her toes up his leg and back down again, watching him shiver. “But this isn’t meant to be some Disney crap with rainbows and shooting stars, okay? I- I’m really fucking glad you decided to ditch the God Squad and be on our side in this, but it’s probably gonna end bloody so you shouldn’t get your hopes up, okay?”

“I am not intending to allow either you or Sam to die in this war,” Cas says sharply, and Dee bites out a laugh.

“You’re not ‘allowing’ us to do jack shit, Cas. One of us is Michael’s meatsuit, one of us is Lucifer’s. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens to the loser.”

“Michael won't harm your brother,” Cas says firmly, and Dee shakes her head.

“Don’t tell me you still believe that bullshit.”

Cas glares at her, but doesn’t reply. They lie in silence for a while, and Dee reaches up to drag her fingers through the fog on the window above her.

“You implied earlier that you had intended to initiate this for a while,” Cas says eventually, and Dee sighs.

“Yeah. Like I said, I was gonna do it right, candles and champagne and, and rose petals and shit, but...” she shrugs. “That hooker hadn’t really unwrapped you, but she’d got started and since you normally look like some repressed tax accountant it was a big deal.” She slants a look at him. “I don’t think you get how much willpower I had to not just grab you by the tie and ravish you right there.”

“Not that much, as I believe public fornication is frowned up,” Cas points out, and Dean rolls her eyes.

“Smartass.”

Cas’s mouth tugs upward, eyes glittering. “But you informed me earlier that smartasses don’t get laid.”

“More than once, especially when they’re so smug about it.”

“And if I endeavor to be less of a ‘smartass’ in future?”

“Oh wow, subtle,” Dee says, but she rolls over and he goes with it until she’s on top. “Then I guess you’ll continue gettin’ laid, Casanova.”

Cas’s hands come up to cradle her hips. “I had worried that what you said earlier meant that this was a one-time occurrence.”

“Nah,” Dee says easily, sitting up and balancing herself with her hands spread flat on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing and the warmth of his skin. She smirks down at him as laciviously as she can; her very own, thoroughly debauched angel. “Just cause it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean you can’t bang a few gongs before the lights go out.”


	13. girl!Dean and Cas have a baby

so sam finds out about dee and cas because there's a pregnancy scare during the latter half of s6

(he comes back cause he forgot a thing and gets half a yelled sentence from dee, muffled through the door, before cas says "we should continue this when sam isn't outside" and flaps away and sam barrels in all "no dee god i'm sorry i wasn't like evesdropping or anything it's just you were shouting so i-"and dee's like "god sam i don't even care i don't think you'd do that just get your stuff and go" and sam goes to the bathroom for...reasons and finds a pregnancy test in the trash. so he's obviously like "dee what-? is this-? you were the one that gave ME the safe sex talk what the fuck" and dee is like "shut the fuck up we ARE safe but condoms weren't made to deal with ANGEL SPUNK" and sam's like "...wait, CAS?". and then cas pops up all "oh shit i forgot to add that to my recap huh" and sam's like "YEAH i thought it was just an end-of-the-world thing i didn't think you were actually making a go of it omg. so anyway ARE you knocked up?" and dee's like "no thank fuck this DICKWAD just scared me is all" and shoves at cas (who doesn't even wobble) and then sam leaves them to it because he has important research to do)

BUT THEN there's a hunt or something and cas turns up, takes one look at dee, and goes still and says, very very measured and calm "deanna, why didn't you tell me you were with child?" and dee laughs a little hysterically and is all "hahaha that's not funny you'renotlaughingohgod" and sam catches her when her knees go

"what the fuck i have an iud this should not be happening" is her first proper sentence (because her periods are hell and she can't keep refilling the pill from all across the country not to mention schedules are not really a thing with her), followed by "how far along?"

"[developed brain/nerves/heartbeat] weeks" cas says, still carefully measured, and dee folds down over herself and snarls "FUCK" and then "shouldn't you've been able to smell it on me or shit? what the HELL cas, if this is some pro-life religious bullshit-"

"i can see the first glimmers of its soul," cas says, flat and tightly-reined, and dee curls up tighter and wails "fuuuuck"

later, back at bobby's/at the motel, sam sits down beside her, tells her carefully, gently that he and bobby are on her side whatever she chooses, and dee slumps into him and says blankly "how can i be a mom sam, i'm a fuckin' alcoholic who hunts monsters. not to mention that this," and her hand flattens under her bellybutton, "isn't exactly a full-on human either". she goes on - "what the fuck we don't even have a place to live, what about money, what about FOOD this kid can't live on greasy diner food sam it's a fuckin' BABY, oh wait no it's a fucking ANGEL what if it possesses me what if it rips me open what if it's born with wings or fifty thousand eyes or ON FIRE WHAT IF IT'S THE SECOND COMING oh god oh god. what if i'm like dad? what if i die, or just have to leave it because we have to save the world again or just because there's this one wendigo i have to gank before it kills again" - and sam listens and makes soothing noises and interjects when necessary that they wouldn't let that happpen/let her do that, and finally dee drops her head onto his shoulder and is all "...guess i'm keping it then."

cas is kind of...weird about it, because HOLY FUCK A THING HE CREATED ON HIS OWN but then NEPHILIM ARE FORBIDDEN THEY ARE ABOMINATION WHAT WILL HEAVEN DO but then EEEE BABY

dee just buys bigger clothes as she expands, "none of that maternity shit", and hunts until she gets unwieldy at like 6 months. sam and bobby buy ALL THE BABY BOOKS, and dee laughs at them and refuses to even crack a cover, though cas sneaks one sometimes and reads it avidly. he insists he can't tell the sex of the baby, can only sense it's soul (growing brighter and stronger by the day), and in any case souls are souls and have no gender. dee yells at him a lot and insists on foot massages and back massages and various other ailment remedies that cas is happy to provide, and cas talks to her belly just as he would to any of them, which dee finds hilarious. she takes to calling the baby "squirt" and "kiddo" and grumbles at it a lot, but in the way she grumbles at sam. sometimes sam even catches her singing to it, little snatches of melody or hummed riffs.

if this happens in s6 then there was no rebellion/it was quashed/it's not serious and cas tells them he's going on a ~50 year shoreleave and gives rachel control for everything less than raphael staging a coup (and even then only if things are seriously going to shit). sam finds dee one morning wondering apparently aimlessly around the junkyard in flipflops (the only thing that'll fit her swollen feet, shut the fuck up sam) and one of his old shirts, stopping at the odd car to brace her weight on it and breathe. when sam calls out to her she tells him she's fine, but sam calls for cas anyway and he appears instantly right by dee, hand settling on her back and making her roll her eyes because seriously she's FINE people have been having babies for a million years.

*

The TV’s on but neither of them are watching it, though it provides some welcome background noise; Sam’s got a bottle of beer he’s sipping at distractedly, Bobby a tumbler of scotch he keeps tapping his fingernails against as he pretends to read, though he’s been on the same page since he opened the book. There’s no sound from downstairs, not even the faint echo of Dee yelling profanities at Cas for what he’s putting her through, and Cas apparently hasn’t seen fit to come and update them - rationally, of course, it’s because he doesn’t want to break the angel wards, but it’s also quite possible that Dee’s forbidden him to leave her since this is all his fault.

Sam stares at the TV without really seeing it, just a blur of movement in front of his eyes as he tries not to think about what might be happening down there, what Dee might be going through. Sure, she’s got Cas, who’s better than a whole team of doctors in the whole not-dying department, but he knows jack-shit about the actual, y’know, _process_ , and what if he doesn’t notice something’s wrong until it’s too late? What if there’s some complication that his grace can’t cure? The hundred problems Sam knows he shouldn’t have read about but couldn’t help it because had to _know_ have come back to haunt him, and he _hates_ this helplessness, this banishment upstairs when he should be down there with her. 

It’s a thousand times worse up here with his imagination running riot than it would be down there, even if he’d maybe be seeing parts of his sister that he’s never wanted to; he’s seen worse, seen Dee in pain and bleeding and dying, torn apart, so why would he baulk at this when it’s got to be nothing in comparison and should end up a million times better? And anyway, even if it _was_ somehow the worst thing he’d ever seen at least he’d _be there_ , with her, like he’s always been-

There’s that rustle of wings and Cas is standing just inside the doorway. Both Sam and Bobby jerk and scramble up to their feet. Cas is down to his shirtsleeves, the white no longer pristine and stained with stuff Sam really doesn't want to look at too closely, and he sounds exactly the same as ever when he says, “It’s a boy.”

If you didn’t know him, Sam thinks, you’d think he didn’t care, but it’s obvious that he’s just still kind of in shock at the whole experience - Sam doubts childbirth still looks like a miracle from the business end of things and with Dee cussing a blue streak at you the whole time - and having to once again deal with his whole world shifting sideways. There’s still something faintly stunned about his expression, but his eyes are bright.

A rush of air and the three of them are in front of the panic room, Bobby falling back just enough to let Sam through first, his feet further scuffing the angel-proofing in the doorway as he crosses the few steps to the bed. There's a bloody anti-angel sigil on the wall above it, apparently Cas's concession to leaving to get Sam and Bobby, and below it his sister is propped up on pillows with her shirt unbuttoned and a tiny, naked baby cupped to her chest.

“Dee...” Sam breathes, unwilling to make a bad impression on his new nephew by talking too loud. “Wow.” His hand hovers, irrationally cautious, then he finally settles it carefully on the baby’s back. His skin is soft and smooth and so _new_ , still flushed red from his birth, and he mumbles at the touch, arms and legs flailing.

“He’s not gonna break, even from your giant sasquatch hand,” Dee says, her voice scratchy, but she’s smiling as she says it, wider than Sam’s seen for a long time. Her hair’s still mostly pulled back, but the usual crazy bits have escaped and are stuck to her cheeks and neck. Her colour’s high, eyes glittering, but she seems fine. “Bobby, the hell are you lurkin’ for? Get over here.”

Bobby comes to stand by Sam and just looks, drinking the baby in with soft eyes and a helpless smile. “Y’alright, Dee?” he asks gruffly.

“'Bout as fine as I can be,” she says, pulling a face and shifting her legs under the sheet. “Feel kinda like raw meat though.” Both Sam and Bobby wince, then frown up at Cas, who’s come to stand at the head of the bed, one hand possessively on the top of the headboard. “Don’t look at him like that, it’s fine, he’s numbed me up good, but he’s right: you shouldn’t interfere with nature too much. I’ve got the damn baby, that’s good enough. For now”

“So, no white light or bleeding eardrums?” Sam asks, stroking a finger down the baby’s arm and over the back of his tiny curled hand. 

“Nope, and no wings either, as you can see.”

“I thought Nephilim were meant to be big?”

“Trust me,” Dee says, grimacing, “he was big enough.”

“It is possible those tales were somewhat exaggerated,” Cas adds, “or he may just grow at a faster rate.” He glances at Sam with a small smile. “In any case, given his genetics, I very much doubt that he will be short.”

“I dunno, Gabriel was pretty short,” Sam teases, and Cas rolls his eyes, though they remain soft and crinkled in a smile.

“Angels aren't related by blood, and in any case his _vessel_ would have no genetic bearing.”

“So, you think of any names yet?” Bobby asks, still gazing down at the baby, and Dee tips her head up to look at Cas.

“Yeah, we, uh,” she glances down, fussing unnecessarily with the baby, hand smoothing down the length of his little body and making him splutter, nuzzling into her. “We’re gonna call him Bobby. Bobby John Winchester.”

Bobby looks like he’s been pole-axed. Very gently, he reaches out and runs a finger down his namesake’s cheek. “Dee, I...”

“Bobby, you’ve been more of a father to me than he ever was,” Dee says seriously, voice rasping even lower. “It wasn’t his fault, and he loved us in his own way, but. If he deserves any name, it’s yours.” 

Her eyes are suspiciously bright, but then so are Bobby’s. Sam huffs a soft laugh. “Hey, no chick-flick moments.”

“Shut up, Sammy, I think I get a free pass here."

“It’s a good name,” Cas says gravely, quirking his little smile at Bobby. He reaches out and gently cups a hand over his son’s head. “Ego te creavit, filius meus, nunc te nomino: Robert John Winchester.” 

Bobby takes a deep breath, blinking hard, and smiles. Sam's own eyes are a little wet, and his grin is so wide it feels like it's stretching his face. Dee laces her fingertips through Cas's on baby Bobby's head and full-on _beams_ at him, and Cas's answering smile is soft and slow and full of wonder.

"See, it's offical now, can't take it back," she says to Bobby, turning away from Cas after a moment of goofy grinning at each other, and Bobby shakes his head.

"Thank you, Dee. I don't know what to say. I never thought this would happen, so...thank you."

Dee's hand darts out from the bed to catch Bobby's wrist and squeeze, and Bobby twists his arm to catch her hand in both of his and squeeze back before letting her go.

As if on cue, baby Bobby hiccups, legs kicking and arms twitching, then the sound becomes a whimper. "Shh squirt, hey. You hungry?" Dee murmurs, wirggling herself up higher against the pillows and shifting him into a more traditional hold, held in the crook of her arm and turned into her chest. She glances up. "Uh, no offense, but-"

"No, no, we're just gonna-" Sam says, jerking a thumb at the door, because yeah, much as he'd love to just sit here and stare at his nephew forever, the kid has needs and he's already seen Dee shirtless _way_ too often. "You uh, you hungry too? Cause we can..."

"Yeah, actually," Dee says, preoccupied with stroking a thumb over baby Bobby's cheek and keeping his impatient splutterings down to a soft grumble, even as he turns his face into her touch, mouthing at her thumbtip. "A sandwich might be nice."

"Okay, sure," Sam says, heading for the door after Bobby, and behind him he hears the sheets rustle, and baby Bobby's mumbling rises irritably and then trails off. 

***

OR

***

it happens in s8 because whoops purgatory (it's not like she carries reams of condoms on her and cas said it wasn't exactly an environment condusive to life and anyway he'd never allow conception unless she wants it) (but it was the last night before they got to the portal and was essentially cas's parting gift to her - and don't think she didn't sock him one when they found him again because what the fuck is that thought process jesus SHE DID NOT FUCKING ASK FOR THIS AND SHE'D RATHER HAVE HIM, ALIVE - and when she thinks back he was kind of sweet and desperate and tender) the immediate freakout is whether the kid has enough grace to be affected by the fall.

*

“Hey Sammy, I got you, it’s gonna be okay,” Dee is murmuring, and the world is tilting sideways and lurching like a spinning top or a traffic collision but _he’s_ moving too, Dee’s arm round his waist and hand fisted tight in his shirt like it’ll hold him up, and her shoulders are solid under his arm. “C’mon, we’re goin’ outside, get you some fresh air. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other kiddo, that’s it, cause even though I’m super awesome I can’t carry all three of us.”

“Sorry,” Sam tries to say, withdrawing his arm, trying to find his own feet even though he can’t really see and what he can is swirling away from him, and Dee’s other hand flashes up to grab his fingers.

“No, it’s fine, I was just saying. You’re doin’ great, just keep swimming. Heh.”

They’re outside now, the spring air cool on his face, his overheated skin, and the shining black bulk of the car is looming out of the confusion. That’s home, that’s safe, and when they get close enough he lets himself stop, slump down against the metal and lean on it, close his eyes. He knows Dee’s kneeling in front of him, hands on his face, saying his name sharp and worried because he can hear the wheeze of his own breathing in his ears, feel the tightness in his chest that shouldn’t be there, the inexorable weight of something constricting his lungs, making him gasp in air he can’t seem to get enough of, and-

“Cas!” Dee is yelling, furious and frantic. “Castiel, come _down here_ you bastard, it’s _Sam_!”

But there’s no rustle of wings, even under the rasp of Sam’s breathing and the rushing in his ears. And then, over and behind Dee’s head, there’s a spark against the night sky, a comet or something burning up in the atmosphere, with another one off to the right and higher up. Sam blinks, slow, brain fuzzy, because it seems like maybe that’s important, a sign like in medieval times, Dee praying and getting shooting stars in answer, more and more of them blossoming into life, bigger than usual and _glowing_ , like really bright...

“Oh shit,” Dee says, breathless, the hand not on Sam’s shoulder dropping to her stomach, though for protection or reassurance Sam doesn’t know. And again, more desperate this time, really meaning it, “ _Cas_!”

But he doesn’t answer. And he won’t, Sam admits reluctantly, the knowledge creeping cold through his limbs as he struggles to breathe, because those aren’t meteors at all, they’re-

“The angels,” Dee breathes, stunned. “They’re falling. Oh god, Cas, what did you do?”

Sam fumbles for her hand, links his fingers through hers on the hard swell of her stomach. “He’ll be okay, Dee,” he manages, and she glares at him.

“Stop talking and breathe.” But her fingers clench around his, rubbing absently over her bump like he’s seen her do sometimes when she’s been thinking about Cas and Naomi and all the weirdness that’s been going on up in Heaven this year. The baby kicks under the touch, hard enough that even Sam feels it, and Dee hisses. “No squirt, it’s fine, sssh. We’re fine.”

He’s almost okay, Sam finds, if he only takes shallow breaths, doesn’t try and expand his ribcage too far and come up against what feels like a vice around his chest. In the dark he can see better too, the only light coming from the moon and maybe a little from the long trailing flares of the falling angels. One actually goes right overhead, crashing into the water nearby with a heavy splash, and Sam wonders if it’s like Cas, heavy clothes, suit and shoes and long coat dragging it down, impeding limbs that don’t even really know how to function in the first place.

“Should we...help them?”

Dee looks torn, head swiveling to watch the ripples. But neither of them is in a fit state to help anyone right now, especially not a thrashing angel experiencing drowning for the first time, and as horrible as it feels... _What if that was Cas?_ comes the thought, unbidden, and Sam tries to cast it away but it lingers. _Dee prayed to him, what if that was the best he could do while he was in the middle of burning through the atmosphere? Can he even swim?_

The baby kicks again and Dee’s fingers close around his tight enough to hurt. It’s probably reacting to Dee’s stress, she should- “Hey,” Sam says, shaking their conjoined hands a little, “you have to calm down, there’s nothing we can do...”

Dee nods but her grip only barely softens, hand smoothing over the curve of her belly, a soothing sweep back and forth. “Hey squirt, chill out okay? You heard your Uncle Sam, we’re sorry we can’t help but- I know they’re your family, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but Cas is probably stuck up a tree somewhere and he’ll be back, so- seriously, chill out, you’re starting to freak me out here and I’ve only got time for one Winchester emergency at a time, okay? Please.” Her voice cracks at the end, thickening into a sob, and Sam reaches the short distance and pulls her to him, leaning them both back against the car and rubbing circles over her back.

“Dee?”

“I don’t- Sammy, I don’t know, I think- all the angels falling, I think it can _feel_ it, it’s kind of freaking out and I- it’s half-angel, what if it’s got grace, what if it’s being affected too?” Her voice catches, breaks, and she buries her face in his shoulder, breathes hot and fast enough for him to feel it through the layers.

Sam concentrates on breathing slow and easy, for both of them. Dee clenches her fingers in his jacket and gradually falls into rhythm with him. She takes a shocky little breath, then another.

“Okay?” Sam asks, soft, and she exhales hard, keeps her forehead pressed just below his collarbone. She sucks her next breath in through her teeth, almost a hiss, and...Sam knows those sounds. He feels the dread that had been lurking heavy in his gut roil to life. “Dee? Are you-?”

“I don’t know,” she says tightly. “Like I said, it might just be freaking out and, y’know, its family is falling out the sky _on fire_ so why shouldn’t it freak out? Feels like it might be more, though, I haven’t cramped like this since I was fifteen. Feels like my fuckin’ spine’s turning inside out. And, oh yeah, it’s fucking six weeks early.”

“That’s not so bad,” Sam soothes, trying to scrabble for his cell without moving too much cause it makes him hack up what feels like his lungs. “And I mean, Cas said it was okay, right?”

“Cas said its _soul_ was okay,” Dee corrects, peeling herself away from him to settle back against the car too. She doesn’t let go of his hand though. “It might be some kind of mutant physically for all we know.”

“Dee-”

“It’s an _angel_ , Sam. It might have with three heads or eyes all over its body or wings or just be _light_ , we don’t know! And Cas was supposed to _be here_ so some midwife doesn’t get her eyes burned out!”

Sam finally wrangles his cell phone out of his pocket and squeezes Dee’s hand as he waits for it to boot up. “Hey, we don’t know that this is it, okay, it might just be a reaction to all this,” and he flicks his head up at the sky above them, ablaze with angels.

“Well if labour feels worse than this then Cas can mojo the damn thing out himself,” Dee growls, “because lemme tell you Sammy, I’m pretty sure I’d rather have a hellhound chewing on my liver than have to deal with hours more of this. At least the hellhound would be quick.”

“Stop being pissed off and _breathe_ ,” Sam instructs through the horrible thick, metallic taste in his throat, because that’s what they always say on TV, right? There some kind of special breathing thing you have to do? Not that Dee would know. “ _911 emergency_ ” says the voice in his ear, staticy and too loud, and Sam swallows down the nausea and makes himself say clearly, “Yeah, I think my sister’s in premature labour, she’s like six weeks early. We’re out at All Souls Church?”

“ _Yes sir...be there shortly. Is this...-regnancy?_ ”

“Yeah,” Sam says. Everything’s spinning again, so he closes his eyes on the darkness and the blazing trails of dying angels. His mouth feels like it’s detached from his body, like he’s hearing stuff and replying to it later. “She’s only about 32 weeks. It’s not- she hasn’t been tested for anything, she hasn’t had any check-ups.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dee mutters next to him, although whether it’s pain or annoyance at him or Cas or herself Sam doesn’t know. However, the way she’s crushing his hand indicates it might be the former.

“It’s all kind of sudden, can you hurry?” he adds, and the connection fizzes and crackles back at him. Another angel plunges by overhead, and the phone hisses so loud Sam drops it. It bounces off the concrete and the screen flashes and goes dark. Fuck, did he even get through? And if he did how long will it take them to get here when they’ll have to come across angels on the road, probably injured or dying? What if Sam has to-?

“ _Fuckfuckfuck_ ,” Dee hisses, sounding furious with the entire universe except for the way her voice wavers. “I’m- Sammy, I think I’m bleeding.”

*

she goes and gets scans and shit but it turns out everything's fine. once she knows that she almost summons metatron herself to punch him in the face, but gets talked out of it because if he doesn't know it seems like a bad idea to tell him, not to mention it won't help. jody and linda tran offer to be her birthing buddies (the bunker is warded against all comers and also ahahaha hospital no, hospitals are where people die and anyway medicine isn't gonna save her half-angel baby if something goes wrong, though she makes sam promise to try, at her expense if necessary, and sam nods along and vows to take them both), and dee ums and ahs because wow it's not exactly gonna be pretty but they both laugh and tell her that trust them she won't give two fucks when it's time, and finally she agrees. this makes sam annoyed because what the fuck she's his sister he wants to be there, and finally dee puts her foot down. meanwhile, charlie, kevin and garth (because like he'd miss this. also an actual hunter needs to keep an eye on crowley when this goes down because sam sure won't be in any fit state) form an "i like babies but only when i can give them back, and i have exactly zero interest in the production process" club. cas turns up a few months later looking world-weary and exhausted, and dee prompty punches him in the face ("you fuck i thought you were DEAD") and looks only slightly mollified when cas actually staggers and starts bleeding.


	14. Sam gets a hellhound puppy

They're all just kind of chilling out when Crowley shows up - Bobby and Sam buried in books and Dean watching TV while trying to pretend his feet are in Cas's lap because the couch is too small - but his appearance is accompanied by a kind of squeaky, muffled growl, which immediately gets all their attention. Dean whips his feet out of Cas's lap and onto the floor and Cas actually curls his lip, distaste written across his face.

"Why have you brought that creature here?"

Crowley shrugs. "I thought Sam might like a pet." One of his hands is cupped weirdly, and the other is closed into a loose fist just above it, and twitching from side to side, like something invisible is fighting his hold. On closer inspection, the supporting hand is covered in bloody scratches, like whatever it is has been trying to get away. There's really only one thing that violent that Crowley would let hurt him like that.

"Is that a _hellhound_?"

"A whelp," Crowley answers. "Born a few minutes ago - you have to take them away or they'll get eaten. They don't make very good mothers."

"I thought they could only be controlled by demons," Sam says slowly, staring down Crowley's hands and coming warily round the side of the desk.

"Oh, that's easily sorted," Crowley says cheerfully, and in a blink he's transferred the puppy to one hand and shoved the other into Sam's chest, yanking upwards. Sam jerks, breath leaving him in a startled gasp, and Cas is gone from the couch and has his sword to Crowley's throat. 

“Let him go.”

Crowley withdraws his arm, holding it up in surrender, and Sam staggers and sucks in a huge breath, eyes black as oil.

"Sam! What the fuck did you do to him, you son of a bitch?"

"Not what you think," Crowley says, and rolls his eyes back to look at Cas. "Tell them, angel."

"No, Dean it's okay, I-" Sam says, then blinks and stares at Cas and Crowley. "Holy _shit_." 

"What?" Dean demands.

"Cas, you've got _wings_ ," Sam says reverently, and Dean and Bobby both blink over at Cas, who looks exactly the same as he always does. Cas frowns a little, but his sword arm relaxes.

"I just stirred up those dormant demon powers of his," Crowley says patiently. "He's not evil, or whatever else you think, he's just a little more demonic than normal at the moment, and he can...see things his human eyes can't. Now, delightful though it is to have your arms around me, angel-" and he shrugs out of Cas's grip. Cas eyes him expressionlessly and tucks his sword back up his sleeve, like a reverse magician's trick.

"Why?" Bobby growls, and Crowley grins.

"Ah Bobby, always asking the hard-hitting questions. So I can do _this_." His hand sweeps over, picks up the invisible puppy, releases it's impromptu muzzle and drops it against Sam's chest. Sam's hands instinctively come up to catch it, despite the look of disgust on his face, and then a bloody crescent opens up at the base of his thumb and he swears, hands flying apart but the puppy apparently hanging on, judging by the way he's flailing his hand around. Crowley sniggers.

"Oh, you can't get rid of him now, he's got your taste."

Sam stops flailing and closes his hand around thin air, evidently prying the thing off, and holds it gingerly several feet away from him. The squeaky growling, which had gone silent, starts up again.

"So what, now he's _stuck_ with the thing?" Dean snaps, and Crowley looks deeply smug. 

"A dog is for life Dean, not just for Christmas. Anyway, don't tell me it won't be useful - you've seen what they can do."

Dean grits his teeth, fighting not to shudder at the memory of his stomach being ripped open, and the fucking _feel_ of the thing that did it burying its muzzle in the wound to get to his guts. He sees Cas look over at him, and refocuses on Crowley. "Yeah, fat lotta good it'll do when I can't even _see_ the damn thing."

Cas is abruptly in front of him, and over his shoulder Dean catches Crowley's smirk.

"I'm sure your angel can help with that."

Cas's hand curves across the top of Dean's arm, unerringly lining up to the handprint under Dean's sleeves, and Dean's attention is immediately back on him, arm warming and fizzing with what feels like pins and needles. He opens his mouth to ask what Cas is gonna do, but Cas rumbles, "Close your eyes Dean," and he can only obey. A second later, with a low murmur of Enochian, Cas's thumb presses lightly over his right eye, then his left, and instead of the usual darkness his vision glows like the sun is in his eyes, almost but not quite enough to make him flinch. When he opens his eyes, Cas is staring at him, the slightest of smiles on his lips, and his wings are settling back to his shoulders.

Dean blinks at him a few times, then impatiently grabs him by the shoulder and spins him round. They’re still not proper wings, stuck somewhere between solid and transparent, and they’re kind of shining, each individual feather outlined in light. They’re big and imperfect, notched and a little disarrayed, but that seems about right, given the normal state of Cas’s hair and all, and Dean's reaching for them before he can think. His hand goes right through, touching the softness of the trenchcoat instead, warm from Cas's bodyheat, and Cas casts an amused look at him over his shoulder. 

"They are merely impressions, the closest human eyes can come to seeing the glory of my true form," he says quietly, and Dean rolls his eyes, smirking a little.

“Glory, huh?” He strokes them anyway, then braces himself and looks over Sam and the puppy.

Sam's got freaky giant hands, so there's just its head and front legs sticking out from the top of his fist, but that doesn't really make it much better. It's black, and kind of slimy, but it's definitely got teeth and claws, which almost look stupid in such a tiny thing until you remember what it _is_. Its eyes are black like a demon's and its face is all wrinkly and squashed, and it's basically just a pocket-sized version of the beasts that chewed on Dean's liver and now that he can see it, he'd love nothing better than to take it out back and shoot it, or maybe just stomp on it like a particularly ugly cockroach.

Cas has turned to look at Bobby, but Bobby is holding up his hands. "Oh no, don't even _think_ it, boy. Judgin' from the way those two look, I don't think I _wanna_ be able to see that thing."

Cas inclines his head, then goes over to Sam and touches his hand. The bitemark disappears, but the dog goes fucking _nuts_ , wriggling and twisting and making furious high-pitched noises and gouging bloody clawmarks into Sam's fist as it tries to get to Cas. Cas looks down at it with the same disdain Dean feels, and his wings twitch. "Sam, do you intend to keep this creature?"

Sam stares down at it himself, jaw set against the pain. “I- it’s just a _baby_ , Cas, I can’t just let you kill it.”

“I assure you, it would be not great loss,” Cas says, glaring down at it, and Crowley makes an irritated noise. Sam glances over at him.

“Will it- I mean, can I train it, now I’m all...demony?”

“Of course, why do you think I did it?” Crowley says, looking further annoyed by the stupidity of humans. “It’s yours now.”

“So I can train it to hunt with us,” Sam says, looking over at Dean, then at Cas. “I’m pretty sure it could take down anything we could throw at it. And it could be a guard dog too, here and if, I don’t know, we ever have to leave the car in a shady neighbourhood or something.”

“Hey, I would never leave my baby to fend for herself like that!”

“No, but Dean, I’m just saying, _if_ -”

“Yeah, and of course, it’ll rip all our throats out as soon as it can stand on its own four legs,” Bobby says loudly, silencing them, and Crowley shrugs one shoulder, mouth twitching.

“Only if he’s badly trained. They’re supposed to go for maiming, not killing. At least, not straight away.”

Dean fights away the sense memory of his stomach being shredded open under frantic claws and the phantom pain that accompanies it. Sam and Bobby both look a little nauseated, and Cas looks like he’s about to smite a bitch, wings bristling. Crowley holds up his hands, backing away.

“Sorry, sorry, I forgot you’ve had first hand experience.” He looks over at Sam. “Feed him blood for the first few weeks, then raw meat.” Then he throws a wary glance at Cas and vanishes.

*

they throw names around - spike/toto/ruby (Dean), baskerville/cerberus/fenrir, (sam) grim/dip [evil blood-drinking Catalan legend] (Bobby) - and finally settle on Drac(ula says dean, but sam claims it’s actually short for dracul - demon/dragon). he does in fact guard the impala, but dean is always wary because the thing hates him and what if it scratches up his baby in revenge? it's also hard to sleep on the nights they share a motel room because he can see the thing watching him with those glowing eyes from the end of sam's bed, just waiting for him to fall asleep so it can chow down on his toes. "go to sleep dean" cas always tell shim sleepily, and drapes a wing over his face so all he can see is gold-latticed feathers


	15. AU - cop!Dean & professor!Cas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The actual fic bits, as opposed to the plot outline, were [posted on tumblr](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/58510777631) a while ago.

cas is a theology/religious studies professor with a focus on early-middle eastern religions. he speaks (well, reads) like six different languages, enochian and aramaic and hebrew and old egyptian and probably some old arabic, and he's passable at latin and ancient greek. he turns up at dean's work because their latest killer is a religious nutjob who's relying on satanic/esoteric rituals as settings for his killings, and who leaves messages in enochian(?) at the kill sites, and cas is in the area giving a talk to the local university.

dean is a homicide detective, like his mother, because these people need to be brought in before they cause any more destruction. cas and his name and his glasses and his smoker's voice and his precise fingers and his easy slip into enochian and his braaains intrigue him, so when he finds a post-it covered in familiar symbols stuck to his case paperwork that translates to, essentailly, "call me" once it's all over, he keeps it.

mary was a police cadet when she met john, fresh from vietnam and determinedly training to be a mechanic because machines are easy and people are terrible. they got married, had two kids, and then one night mary woke with a mother's sixth sense, went to the nursery to see if sam was hungry, and got firebombed. maybe it was the light she turned on, maybe the guy (a serial arsonist and one of her cases) just knew it was the nursery, it doesn't matter; what matters is that whatever was in the molotovs burned hot, fast and fierce, and by the time mary could assess her surroundings she only had two options: 1) curl up in a corner with sam and hope john could save her, or 2) throw herself through the fire in the doorway and save herself. she chose option 2 and that's how john found her, curled tight on the hallway floor rolling the last of the flames out with sam cradled to her chest and wailing like a banshee. dean's main memory of the fire is sam screaming and the flames, lighting up his mother lying curled on the floor with sam in her arms. john prised sam from her and passed him to dean, shoved him at the stairs and told him to run outside as fast as he could, that john would be right behind him. they sat on the hood of the impala and watched their house burn as sirens got louder and drowned out his mother's hissing sobs, sam's fretful hiccups and john's low, calm, only slightly shaky voice telling them all that it was gonna be okay. mary walked with a cane from then on but she was back on the force within a year, and john, paranoid motherfucker that he was, took dean out for the weekend of his eighth birthday and taught him how to shoot a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun; where to hit a man so he was in pain, incapacitated, dead.

cas was the youngest of five children, all adopted by a good, well-off christian couple in the mid-70s (somewhere in the bible belt because names?). nick and michael first, who swiftly became inseperable; gabriel next once the boys were settled, who learned to amuse himself when michael and nick shut him out of their games; then anna, when michael and nick were teens and falling out, michael taking her under his wing and nick turning to gabe; and finally cas, who his parents weren't really looking for but who they heard about on a thursday like it was meant to be. the boy next door, balthazar, moved in when he was about six and balthazar was about ten and they quickly became best friends and went to sunday school together (balthazar is also who taught him to swear, to question what he's told to blindly believe, to kiss). hester, rachael and inias are friends from college; alfie is one of his graduate students who worships the groud he walks on. once cas was at college and happy his parents announced they were becoming missionaries and disaster relief aid workers; sold their house and most of their stuff and left. modern tech is not really their thing and in any case 95% of the places they go don't have wifi, so they write letters every few months, and send parcels back full of local trinkets and a few polaroids.

sam is a lawyer and on track to become a partner when one of the current ones retires in a few years; he's married to jess and they have a little girl, annie (annabel) and are planning on more. michael is some kind of corporate something, possibly banking, dean's never really cared enough to find out, and is apparently married to his work, which gabe likes to tell him is unhealthy. nick's a lawyer, one of the nasty ones, who takes a lot of interest in sam; balthazar likes to refer to him and his long-term girlfriend as "lucifer and lilith" and dean has to remind himself that's not their actual names. gabe works in a bakery/confectionary (he makes their wedding cake) and always seems to smell like sugar. he and balthazar flirt outrageously and have done for years, sometimes despite girl- or boyfriends, but haven't yet, to anyone's knowledge, got it on. bathazar works in wine-tasting or something; mostly he seems to bum around europe and acquire money by magic. anna does a lot of charity work and seems to be deeply content with it; she especially loves working with kids in care.

dean and cas date easily; they chat on the phone for a while when dean does call him, arrange to meet for drinks after work though dean gets cockblocked by a case (a few times?), so they reschedule and cas turns up in his (scarf and) coat to make sure he keeps it this time. despite having very little in common music/car/sport wise they talk easily, and dean sings along to a couple of lines of his favourite song on the radio, cas telling him later that right then he knew he was going to fuck him no matter what. dean does the "so you wanna get out of here" thing and cas agrees; their first kiss is dean leading the way out to the impala and cas crowding him up against it and then telling him regretfully but with dancing eyes that he has to get up early in the morning and needs to go. it turns out he meant "go to the other side of the country", but he makes it very clear that he means to come back and he and dean email/call/letterwrite back and forth (the letterwriting is all cas, priority mail that tells dean all the things he wants to do to him in three languages and fragments of thousand-year-old poetry) for a month until cas is free to come back to kansas, and which point they don't leave the house for three days.

they get engaged two years later, cas technically proposing first by mentioning [some ancient marriage ritual] and then repeating it against dean's skin in the dark, but dean's the one that makes the rings becasue he's a sap like that and does it while cas is away. also done while cas is away is the tattoo of said ancient marriage ritual across his hip, copied exactly from where cas wrote it in his valentines card/last note before he left. the wedding isn't legal but seven years later it becomes so; it's held in cas's local church, which gives no fucks and believes marriage is a promise made betwen two people before god, and the reception is in balthazar's back garden because there are good memories there. they send several pictures to cas's parents: one of cas and his family, one of dean and his, one of everyone, formal and posed, and another of them laughing and throwing confetti, one of the cake-cutting, one of them outside the church beaming (cas wears a dark (pinstriped?) three-piece suit and a blue cravat and dean almost feels bad for having such inappropriate thoughts in a church; dean wears a light grey suit and an off-white shirt open at the collar, because fuck ties this isn't even legal, though his pocket square matches cas's cravat), and one of them at the reception, dean in a ridiculous headband with attached veil gabe had snuck onto his head and being dipped by cas, caught so his flailing hands actually look like they're fisted lovingly in cas's waistcoat. (they don't have a photographer, just several friends with cameras)

they get a dog six months later, as practise for kids. dean wants to call him spike, rex, killer, cas thinks that's dumb; they compromise on apollyon, greek for "destroyer". poll is a mutt, collie/wolfhound/pointer/whatever, lean and hairy and easy to train, though he likes to pretend he doesn't understand sometimes and has been known to ignore you completely if bored of your repetition. he also enjoys running off with dean's shoes for no discernible reason, though he returns them no worse for the wear bar a bit of slobber.

*

It takes Dean maybe three tries to get the key in the lock, and then once he manages it the inward swing of the door almost pulls him off his feet where he’s been unconsciously leaning on it. He manages to shut it behind him and tips his forehead into the cool glass, just for a moment, and listens to his own breathing; lets his eyes finally close until it’s just him in the dark, safe at home and letting something else hold him up.

There’s that scuffle of paws on wood and Poll snuffles against his hip, insinuating his head between Dean and the door and demanding attention, tail beating against the glass. Dean reaches out with one hand and Poll shoves his head into it, leaning his body against Dean’s leg when Dean automatically starts scratching behind his ear.

Cas’s feet are almost silent on the floor, but even so exhausted it feels like his bones have calcified Dean can hear him, sense him like static electricity is arcing between them, and mumbles Cas’s name, though he can hear it come out as just an incoherent jumble of syllables. Cas doesn’t answer, just puts a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, then slides it up to span the back of his neck.

His fingers close into a loose half-circle and Dean turns blindly towards him, seeking his steadiness and the familiar scent of their sheets on warm skin. Cas’s hand slips down again so his arm can wrap obligingly around Dean’s waist, and when he guides Dean forward Dean lets himself be led, the last forty hours suddenly crashing over him like a wave and eyelids too heavy to open. Dimly he thinks he should be better than this, that he’s gettin’ old and soft and time was he’d have just grabbed some food, drunk a gallon of coffee and gone back for another shift, but then Cas unloops his hold and gives him a good shove and Dean falls back into softness like tiny baby angel clouds and his brain shuts down.

There’s a weird feeling on his feet, and after a moment he realises Cas is taking his boots off, then his socks. Even though it seems like too much effort to open his eyes right now Dean can see him, kneeling on the floor in the t-shirt and ridiculous satin sleep pants he wears when Dean’s out for the night because he says the bed gets cold, hair sticking up on one side where he’s slept on it and those little frown lines over his nose that mean he disapproves of Dean working hard enough to burn out like this but won’t say anything because they could both repeat that argument in their sleep.

“Cas...” Dean tries, then makes his mouth work better and repeats it, flopping one arm out on the comforter like a dying fish. “Someone had t’ do it, ‘s important, we‘ve almost got ‘m.”

Cas snorts, probably more at his quality of speech than what he said, and Dean cracks his eyes open enough to see him rise up and climb onto the bed with him, skirting around him and hooking his arms under Dean’s so he can haul him properly up onto the bed. Dean leans back against his chest and watches Poll fusing around the room like something’s changed since he was last in here.

“Promise me than once you have caught him you’ll come home and sleep for a week,” Cas says finally, halfway through unbuttoning Dean’s overshirt, and Dean hums an affirmative.

“'F I didn’t you’d jus’ come get me ‘n’ drag me home anyway.”

“You’re damn right I would,” Cas says, hands smoothing absently down over Dean’s hipbones before he grabs the bottom of the undershirt and tugs. The bed shifts and rustles as Poll gets bored and jumps up too, sprawling out along the foot and watching them with his head on his paws. Dean listens to the soft flump as his shirt hits the floor and realises  that at some point he closed his eyes again. The fact that Cas is throwing everything on the floor instead of putting it in a neat little pile near the bathroom door says a lot about how he’s feeling right now.

The brief tightening of his belt before Cas gets it open and starts on his slacks makes him snicker. “Not ‘n front ‘f the dog,” he slurs, and Cas yanks belt, pants and underwear down in one and doesn’t even bother replying, which makes Dean laugh harder, stomach muscles pulling taunt with it.

“And somehow I still find your predictability endearing,” Cas says dryly as he pulls the sheets down and manhandles Dean under them, and Dean makes smug noises, grabs for the nearest part of Cas he can reach and presses a kiss there. Cas huffs, but it’s fond, and shuffles around until he can curl up behind Dean and Dean can turn over and press his nose to Cas’s collarbone. He must’ve ninja’d his t-shirt off, sneaky bastard.

“What abou’ the kids?” he manages, lips brushing skin, and Cas takes a moment to translate his question, fingertips tapping lightly off Dean’s spine.

“Pastor Jim understands that you worked late last night and that, as a consequence, I might also be late today.”

“S’ry.”

“Mmm,” Cas agrees, voice rumbling through his chest and sounding like a big cat purring, like the Impala speeding down the freeway with nothing but the open road ahead of her, and Dean’s asleep even before he can finish fully processing the ridiculousness of that thought. 

*

The house is now just a smouldering wreck, the upper floor totally gone and the lower just marked by the chunks of wall still standing. The bodies were found in the basement, where the explosion originated, but Forensics isn’t confident they’ll be able to do anything with them, given they’re little more than ash and charred bones. “Gasoline,” one of them murmurs with a shake of the head, and Dean swallows down his nausea and prays the poor bastards were dead at the time. 

They’re basically waiting on Forensics, nothing to do except stay at his desk and try to do paperwork with the phantom smell of burned flesh in his nose, and Dean calls it a day after an hour and bolts home, doing his best to quash every attempt his brain makes to superimpose Sam and Jess’s first apartment onto the scene, or to distort the bodies so that one is huge with scraps of blackened plaid stuck to the bones, and the other is tiny and still has a few strands of blonde hair clinging to its skull. It’s disrespectful to the dead for a start - so fucking disrespectful - and in any case it didn’t happen, never happened, and he’s seriously fucked up for even _thinking_ about it. 

Cas is in the study when Dean finds him, his stupid nerdy professor glasses on and his pen scratching over paper as he scribbles notes in his swoopy, calligraphic writing. Poll is curled up under the desk, scrunched up surprisingly small to make himself fit and breathing deeply. Dean leans in the doorway and just drinks it in, the normalcy of it all; Cas marking assignments with sarcastic little comments by every unforgivable mistake, whole and alive and with the dog at his feet, surrounded by bookshelves and solid walls.

“You smell like smoke,” Cas says carefully, dropping his pen onto the desk and twisting round to look at him, one hand going up to knead at the junction of neck and shoulder. The glasses make his gaze even more serious, blue eyes focused completely on Dean; not judging or assuming, just waiting. 

Dean wrinkles his nose and shrugs himself off the doorframe. “I did shower.”

“Arson?” Cas asks and Dean shakes his head, coming up behind him and digging both hands into Cas’s shoulders, tight from hours of hunching over his work. The breath Cas exhales isn’t because of Dean’s ministrations though. “How many?”

“Three,” Dean says, rolling his thumb over the stubborn knot at the base of Cas’s neck, and this time the throaty little noise Cas makes is definitely because of him. “...They think they were torched too.”

Cas doesn’t answer, just bows his head forward to let Dean get a better angle. Dean’s almost ruthless, really getting his thumbs in there and pressing down, but Cas just arches into it and hums low in his chest. Eventually Dean slides a hand up into his hair and pulls his head back, and Cas blinks up at him upside down, tongue creeping out over his lower lip. 

Dean plucks the glasses off and drops them on the floor. Cas makes a quiet little noise.

“They’re fine,” Dean says dismissively, and watches the newly-alert Poll wriggle his way out of his little lair to investigate the dropped glasses, then Dean’s foot. “Hey Poll. Yeah, I love you too buddy, but this is really not the place for you right now, so out.” Poll obediently turns and ambles out the door, and Dean follows him to shut it. 

“I really need to break you of your casual disregard for my things,” Cas says, voice gone all smoky and low, and Dean shoots him a smirk and swoops down to pick the glasses up on the way back, dumping them on the nearest shelf. 

“Yeah, you really should get on that.” He waves at the desk. “How much of this is important?”

“All of it,” Cas says, and stands up so he can sweep it all onto the floor, “so please don’t tread on it.”

Dean takes an exaggerated step over the few sheets of paper in his way and crowds Cas back against the desk. “I’ll do my best.”

“You still smell like smoke,” Cas says quietly, hands already under his layers and on skin, nails blunt on his hips, and Dean just grabs the bottom of his shirt, both of them, and yanks them off. Something tears, but it doesn’t matter. He shucks his pants, socks, underwear the same way, throwing them away towards the door. He suspects the smell still lingers in his hair and maybe even on his skin, but his world right now consists of Cas’s rich, familiar aftershave, rising off of warm skin that he can nuzzle into and breathe in, wrap his arms around and hold on to and forget, for a while, about the dirty haze of smoke and the soot-black bricks and whole lives crumbled into ash.

*

So Dean is maybe twenty minutes late to work, whoops - but Cas’ll still make his flight and now at least they’ve both got some good memories to tide them over for the next five days. It’s not like there’s anything important he has to do right now anyway, just a bunch of paperwork he’s been putting off and failing to palm off on Jo.

He’s just thinking about maybe going to get some lunch to celebrate getting about halfway through the pile when Jo appears, face whiter than he’s seen it for a long time.

“Dean, you- you need to come see this.”

Dean follows her to the break room, where the TV’s up loud and full of smoking debris, metal and grass, and everyone else in the room kind of twitches towards him as he comes in, faces blank.

” _-believed to be due to mechanical failure-_ ” the female reporter is saying, and Dean’s stomach folds in on itself, flooding bile up into his throat, and thank god he hasn’t eaten cause otherwise he’d be throwing up, all over everybody’s shiny clean shoes. “ _The plane was on route to Michigan and left Dulles International airport this morning at around twelve thirty-_ ”

There’s this weird ringing in Dean’s ears. He feels like the earth’s just stopped spinning underneath him and he’s the only one who can feel the sudden lack of motion, his body still trying to move forward while stuck staying still. All his limbs feel sort of detached, like they’re suddenly full of cotton candy rather than muscle and bone. He’s kind of expecting to wake up at any moment, reality yawning out around him because this, this is not real.

This is not real.

Cas is not dead.

He turns around and goes back to his cubicle, mechanical, and no one tries to stop him. Cas- there’s no knowing if that was his flight, okay; it might have left earlier, or been delayed, or Cas might have missed it entirely. There is no way that Cas is dead. 

He _can’t_ be - his stupid boring existential bedtime reading book is still on the nightstand, and his spare pair of glasses is still on the shelf in the kitchen, and his fucking mint-flavour shower gel is still hanging in the shower. How can all that stuff now just be useless, worthless? This morning’s herbal tea mug is still sitting in the sink, and his breakfast plate’s still covered in crumbs, and...and this trail of things he’s left behind him, like footprints in sand, they mean he was _there_ , he _existed_ , and he can’t just have suddenly _stopped_.

That’s just fucking _absurd_.

He’s got his head in his hands, Dean realises distantly, fingers curled tight enough to hurt, but he can’t really bring himself to notice or care about the pain. It’s just...inconsequential. Irrelevant. Because if this is a world, a universe, without Cas in it, then everything is irrelevant right now.

“Dean...” Jo says quietly, “do you want me to phone the uh, the airport? To check? I mean, it might not- he-”

Dean lets her words go in one ear and out the other. She’s right, they should check, he might be getting all shaky over nothing, but everything fits and if Cas _is_ , then he doesn’t want to hear it. Not now. (Not ever.)

Eventually, Jo leaves. There’s a low murmur of voices from the direction of the break room, but no one else approaches him. 

Dean feels like he’s wallowing in some vast gulf, some vacuum, and there might as well be lightyears between him and them, some huge and unimaginable distance he hopes they’re never going to find a way to cross. 

Then his phone rings.

Dean stares at it for a second, like he’s never seen one before, and then he remembers to hit the button and lifts it to his ear.

“Dean,” Cas says, warm and firm and alive, “it’s okay, I just thought I'd- it's okay, I’m not dead.”

“...Yeah, I can hear that,” Dean manages finally, and fuck, he’s teared up so much he can’t even see. Even so, he hopes there are puppies and rainbows and fireworks everywhere. “You- are you still at the airport?”

“I was just about to get a taxi home, as I don’t think I’m going to get another flight today,” Cas says softly, obviously hearing the way Dean’s voice wavers.

“Don’t, I’m coming to get you,” Dean orders, already bolting out his chair. Fuck the others, they can survive without him, it’s not like there’s some major crisis or anything. “Don’t you fucking move, okay, or you’ll probably get hit by something. You know what they say about- about cheating death or whatever.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” Cas says, but there’s no annoyance there, only fondness. “You be careful though.”

Dean barks a laugh, thwarted hysteria or just overflowing glee he doesn't bother to dam. “Me? I’ll be fine, I’ll be fucking _peachy_ , don’t you fucking worry about me sweetheart.”

There’s a pause while they both process the fact that Dean never uses pet names unless he’s talking to his car. “See you soon,” Cas says finally, voice gone rich and low, and Dean just nods and ends the call, rubs both hands over his wet cheeks even though he knows it’s a lost fucking cause.

He probably breaks speed limits getting there, and he knows he parks illegally at the Arrivals terminal, but he could give a fuck because Cas and his suitcase and his stupid trenchcoat are waiting for him, looking like some old-time detective, stubble and all, and Dean kind of tackle-hugs him, has a brief moment of empathy with those movie heroines who jump into their boyfriend’s arms, and just holds on.

“I was too late to catch the flight,” Cas explains by his ear. “I’d blame you, but-”

“Once again, blowjobs save lives,” Dean says, not bothering to hide his snickering, and some old business-type nearby looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. Dean beams at him over Cas’s shoulder, and gropes him a little for effect. The businessman scuttles away like a crab to find a rock to hide under.

"Dean," Cas says, low and amused, and Dean gets his hands all over him again just cause, Cas warm and solid and very definitely alive under his hands. "Are you going to take me home, or just molest me in public until you have to arrest yourself for indecency?"

"Oh no, I am _so_ taking you home," Dean says, finally drawing away, and takes Cas's wrist to pull him to the car.


	16. S8 AU - Cas closes the gates (death tag)

The grace-light is unmistakable, blue-white and blinding, and Dean and Sam throw their arms over their eyes and cringe away from the supernova flare of it. Over the rush of unleashed grace, there's the heavy, final sound of the stone doors slamming shut.

"Son of a bitch, he did it," Dean says, low and wondering, as they hesitantly lower their arms and blink away the spots, and Sam glances over at him, confused.

"You thought he wouldn't?"

"No, I- he'd better be alive, is all."

"If anyone would be, it's Cas," Sam says simply, and Dean nods.

They wait. Dean paces; Sam reads the gravestones nearest to the gate, fingers tapping against his thighs. And always there's the murmur from one or other of them, sometimes overlaying each other: angeli dei, nomine Castiel, precipimus te redeo...

Finally there's a whisper of displaced air, the grass bending under a sudden wind, and then Cas is in the circle, swaying slightly but offering the ghost of a smile when he registers them.

They rush to support him and he wraps both arms around them, murmurs "Boys," and leans his forehead against Dean's shoulder. Dean doesn't even mention it, just hugs him back, as tight as he can bring himself to now that Cas is human and fragile.

He's still surprisingly warm though, heat seeping into the arms Dean has around his back, almost liquid-

Dean goes still, then struggles to get free so he can see, but Cas is clinging, using him to stand up, the arms he has around them the only things keeping him upright, and Dean can't let him go now.

"Cas?" Sam says, sudden and sharp, and Cas shakes his head, hair catching at the material of Dean's jacket.

A second later his knees go, and they brace him down, exchanging frantic looks. But he's human now, and they've both seen enough of death to recognise dying when they see it.

"Hey, Cas, hey, don't you dare," Dean says, low and furious, one arm around Cas's waist and the other hand on his chest, and Cas rolls his head sideways and off Dean's shoulder, letting them brace him so he can lift it. His eyes are hazy, but he blinks and they clear a little.

"Demons," he says, like they don't already know. "Meg..."

" _Bitch_ , I'll fu-"

"...saved me."

" _What?_ "

"Allowed me to get...back. To you."

"Cas," Dean says, voice cracking on it, "you bastard, how can you do this to us, we were home free. Saved the world, closed Hell, reorganised Heaven...we were gonna just chill for once, be a family. Go to Disneyland."

Cas turns to him slowly, like his head's heavy to move. "You still will," he says, pronouncing each syllable carefully like he's checking he's still speaking English. His face softens, open and unbearably fond. "You can't save everyone, Dean." 

"But _you_..."

"It's fitting. I assisted in your endevours, but it was always you two boys who would change the world. What you and your brother have done will impact many lives; I'm glad to give of myself to ensure the world is made a better place."

" _Don't you say that-_ "

"Dean." Dean makes a noise that's caught between a sob and a laugh. Cas looks silently at him for a moment, then reaches out and gets a hand round the back of his neck, tugs his head down so he can press his lips to Dean's forehead. " _Dignus es_."

"You-" Dean twists to blot his cheek against one shoulder of his jacket. Cas's hand slips down over his chest, brushing against his shirt, and Dean frees one hand to catch it, fingers locking tight like he can anchor Cas to life if he holds hard enough.

Cas drags his gaze over to Sam, who's got both arms circling his shoulders. His smile's as crooked as ever, but Sam returns it immediately, and the hand Cas raises to his face is steady.

"Cas?" Sam asks, soft, but Cas doesn't explain, just curls his fingers in and brushes his thumb over Sam's forehead. It leaves a dark smudge in its wake. 

" _Beatus_ ," Cas murmurs, knuckle dragging over Sam's nose as he drops his hand, and Sam catches it, blinking the tears free.

"Thank you."

Cas's hand twists in his grasp, grabbing for his shirt like an anchor.

"Hey, hey, we've got you, Cas, we've got you. It's okay." 

They settle him more comfortably, his head still against Dean's shoulder and Sam on his other side, both of them holding his hands where he's clinging to them. His breathing's shallow and wheezes ominously, and Sam silently meets Dean's eyes. _Not long now. Do you want me to take him? You've already had one brother die in your arms._

 _No_ , Dean says adamantly, jaw tightening. _Thanks, but no._ "Hey Cas," he says aloud, clearing his throat, "you would've loved Disneyland, man. Sam's gonna turn into a giant five year-old, it'll be hilarious. Especially as he's about ten times too tall now for most of the rides he wants to go on. The last time we were there, he stuffed himself full of candyfloss and hotdogs then went on a rollercoater, it was not pretty..."

He continues talking, low and rambling through memories, and Cas lists aginst his shoulder, eyes shut, breathing gently fading out.

When the next rasping breath fails to come, when the fingers clutching them close loosen, when the head resting against Dean's chest slumps down, Dean breaks off, drawns in a deep, shuddering breath, and bows his head. 

" _Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei_ ," Sam recites softly, and Dean joins him on the "Amen". Keeping one hand wrapped around Cas's, Sam reaches over with the other and grips Dean's shoulder, and after a seond Dean's free hand comes up and catches at his wrist, tight enough to bruise.

They sit like that for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cas said to Dean: "You are worthy, you deserve [good things]"  
> Cas called Sam "A blessed man"  
> Sam's prayer goes: "Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him".


	17. Cas's mojo works like Viagra

Cas’s fingers, still slightly sticky, settle on the inside of Dean’s thigh, right above his knee. His skin’s still sensitive, nerves sparking feebly at the touch, and he laughs and blinks away from staring at the ceiling, pillow rustling under his head.

“Cas, dude, I’m not exactly a teenager here. Sorry, not gonna happen.”

Cas blinks slowly at him, apparently considering this information, then his fingers slip up and brush over Dean’s dick. Dean twitches because seriously, sensitive, even if he’s not exactly complaining that Cas is apparently so keen to go again cause clearly he’s _just that awesome_ in bed, and then twitches again and draws in a slow breath because fuck if he isn’t getting hard anyway.

“That some of your magic angel mojo?” he asks, shifting his hips forward as Cas pushes himself up onto an elbow and wraps his hand around him again, and Cas hums an affirmative, though with his voice it comes out almost a purr. “Huh. Neat.” 

“I’ve healed you of other physical afflictions,” Cas says lazily, stroking him long and slow.

Dean tries to be offended but gets distracted by Cas’s thumb rubbing over the head of his dick, slick and so good. “Yeah, but- but not being able to get it up again so soon is normal. A-also, my dick is not a, a ‘physical infliction’.” He rolls his head back into the pillow, arching into Cas’s touch. “Fuck it, keep doin’ that.”

"I intend to," Cas says solemnly, at odds with the way his fingers are dragging up Dean's cock and squeezing over the head, coming away wet and smoothing back down again. Dean doesn't remember being able to get this hard this fast since he was about fourteen, and even then never so soon after round one. It's a little disconcerting, to say the least, but his higher thought processes are rapidly dissolving into a single slurred _harderfastermoreneednow_ , and if Cas would just fucking do that once more with a little more pressure he won't be thinking about anything at all.

" _Jesus_ , Cas," he hisses, digging both heels into the bed for better purchase to shove up into Cas's hand, and Cas makes a vaguely disapproving rumble low in his throat. "Sorry, fuck, don't you dare stop, this is all your fault anyway, magic - nuhhh - mojo whatever, fuckin'-"

"Stop talking, Dean," Cas says, fist pulling up the length of Dean's cock just right, and Dean slams his head back against the pillow and does as he's told, coming with only the hitch and shudder in his breath to mark his orgasm. Cas strokes him throught it like always, but this time Dean doesn't soften. The urgency is gone, but his dick remains sticking up against his stomach, flushed against Cas's cradling fingers.

"Motherfucker," Dean hisses eventually, knocking Cas's hand away because it feels like all his nerves are on fire and narrowing his eyes at him. "What did you do?"

"I am led to believe multiple orgasms are a boon," Cas says, sly, and Dean stares at him, still breathing hard.

"Cas, that's...nice and all, but I don't think my body can _deal_ with this, I mean, there's only so many times I can come in one night-"

"Are there?" Cas murmurs, mouth quirking wickedly, and Dean can only swallow hard, the rest of his objections crushed under the onslaught of images of how the next few hours are gonna go.

"If I turn up tomorrow looking like shit in front of Sam, I swear I will..."

"There won't be any lasting effects," Cas promises, shifting forward, eyes glittering. "I can undo it any time I choose. And I will, once I'm satisfied that _you_ are satisfied. All I want for you is pleasure, Dean. Let me give it to you."

"Alright then," Dean says, breathless, and grabs him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him in for a kiss. "Now stop with that Song of Solomon shit and prove it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I think I've mentioned on other fics that I wanted to write a fic exploring the ways Cas and Dean's sex life could incorporate angel powers (this, enochian magic for binding cas and keeping him from touching dean/speaking, invisible!cas amusing himself tormenting dean, etc) but this was the only part that got written]


	18. Dean/Cas fingering porn (Past non-con tag)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was always aware that posting this would be risky, because on the one hand I wanted to acknowledge Dean's past with Alastair, but on the other I know the Healing Cock trope is ridiculous whether it features actual cock or not, and on the third, mutant hand I really just wanted to write porn but couldn't because of point number one.
> 
> All of which is to say: caveat lector, because Dean spends a good chunk of this being violently triggered back to his time in Hell and the sexual abuse he suffered there.

"Hey Castiel-" Dean starts, and that's as far as he gets before Cas is in front of him in a rush of air and wingbeats. Dean grins at him conspiratorially, opens his mouth to say _I was thinking about you on the drive, on your knees in the footwell sucking me off, drawn-out and slow_ , but he doesn't get a chance before Cas is on him, one hand cradling the back of Dean's head and the other palming him through his jeans while Dean grabs for whatever fabric he can reach and anchors Cas in close, still not quite used to the way Cas just _goes_ for him but more than willing to hang on for the ride.

"We should-" he manages when the kiss finally breaks, because he'd like there to be a horizontal surface involved kind of _now_ , but Cas is already stooping and the next thing Dean knows Cas has got him round the waist, lifts him effortlessly up and bears him back towards the bed, dropping him unceremoniously and hard enough to bounce except Cas follows him down, fingers nimble on his fly.

"Like this?" Cas asks when he's got Dean's jeans and underwear down past his ass, freeing his cock to jut up right at Cas's eye level and making that steady gaze waver for just a second, Cas tongue darting out over his lower lip.

"God jesus fuck yes," Dean says in a rush, and Cas's mouth twitches in either amusement or irritation before he leans in and fastens it over the crown of Dean's cock. Dean's gotten a lot of head in his life, and when they started this Cas was kind of weird about it, attentive but not so much enthusiastic as intrigued; once he got over the science-experiment newness of it all though he improved rapidly, and after realising this was one thing Dean wasn't gonna complain about him using his mind-reading powers for, he's become downright _legendary_. Dean's instinct is to wrap his legs around him and sink his hands into his hair and never let him go, but he's hampered by the jeans still round his thighs and Cas's twitchy dislike of hands in his hair, so all Dean can do is fist his hands in the sheets and arch into his mouth, try and press himself closer to the heat of it, the warmth, the rough drag of Cas's tongue and the low-level tug and pull as he sucks.

It's motherfucking glorious, too fast to be teasing but too slow to be rushed, and Dean's riding the upward surge of orgasm just nicely when Cas laps over the head, hot and velvet-soft and amazing, then pulls away. Dean possibly makes a broken little sound and grabs for him, and Cas huffs, leans his cheek against Dean's inner thigh, and strokes his thumb over that strip of thin, sensitive skin just behind Dean's balls. "May I try something?"

"Is it gonna make me come?" Dean asks, too turned on to be less than blunt, and Cas nods, deliberate, stubble sparking at the nerves it slides over.

"Yes."

"Than you don't need to stop and ask, dumbass." Dean shifts agianst the sheets, everything hypersensitive, and rocks his hips up pointedly, maybe playing up the sound he makes at the cool air on his wet dick but it gets Cas's attention and he dips back down, one hand wrapped around Dean's thigh just behind his knee, the other still curled so he can brush a thumb over that little island of skin. It's an extra point of sensation, nerves lighting up at the light, gentle movement, and Dean fucks up into Cas's mouth because he knows Cas can take it.

Cas hums, the feel of it making Dean buck again, and that's when one of Cas's fingers slides back underneath him and over his asshole.

Dean's whole body snaps taunt, switch flipped somewhere in his hindbrain and suddenly he doesn't care that he was _this close_ to coming because _no_. 

Not that, never that, he doesn't- Alastair used to- oh no, no no no, no way.

He doesn't realise he's been speaking aloud until Cas says "Dean," quiet and calm and steady as a rock, and Dean blinks and finds Cas right in front of him, palms warm against his jaw. "I'm sorry. I didn't think."

Dean swallows, feels the movement of it under Cas's hands. "S'okay. Just..." Cas doesn't say anything, just tips his forehead against Dean's, then rolls over to the side. Dean tugs his pants back up, then mimicks him, leaving maybe a foot between them. "What about you?"

Cas frowns. "What about me?" Dean gestures at his groin, and Cas's eyes narrow further. "You think I'd still seek my own pleasure when you're no longer comfortable enough to achieve your own?"

Dean snorts. "I'm just saying dude, it's okay to be kinda pissed you didn't get off. I sure am."

"Dean, this isn't your fault."

"No, I just can't even have _sex_ without thinking about-"

" _Dean_ ," and Cas reaches across and hauls him closer, "you endured tortures for more than your own lifespan. It's understandable that they have left their mark. But their lingering effects are _not your fault_."

Dean huffs where he's plastered against Cas's chest, inhaling the angel's non-scent - Cas doesn't smell like aftershave or showergel, sweat or ozone, salt or incense; if anything, he smells like water tastes, clear and light and blank. "It's okay, dude, I'm fine. Don't treat me like I'm broken."

"Of course you're not _broken_ ," Cas counters, "but neither are you the same as you were."

"Gee, thanks."

Cas sighs. "Dean, if you would just-"

"No," Dean pushes away from him - not far, but enough to look Cas in the eye. "Stop with the psych eval, okay? I don't- I don't need to _talk about my feelings_ , I need to overwrite the bad memories with better ones, which is why I think you should...try that again." He sits up and strips out of his shirt as he talks, then yanks his t-shirt over his head. The sheets rustle, springs squeaking, but Cas is just sitting up, watching him inscrutably.

"No," he says finally, as Dean wriggles out of his jeans and shucks his boots and socks, and Dean straightens up.

"Yes."

"I won't be complicit in exposing you to further traumatic memories," Cas says evenly, but there's a hint of elemental force under the words. "And worse, I won't have you associating me with them."

Dean stills. "That's what you think? Cas, hey, no," and he drops back onto the bed, leans right over into Cas's space, holding his eyes and pushing everything he's trying to say to the front of his mind so Cas can see he's telling the truth, "that's why it's you, you're- you're the complete opposite of it all, you'd never hurt me, I- I need it to be you, not Alastair, cause you- I want you to, I need a better memory if it, otherwise I'm gonna go the rest of my life never being able to...deal with it. You want me to work throught it? This is me working through it. Please."

Cas's eyes bore holes into his head for a few seconds more, then he closes them and slumps. "Alright. If you're certain."

"Attaboy. We'll- lube." Dean rolls away, goes to his duffel and brings the tube back to the bed, pausing at the edge. Cas looks back at him, waiting. "Can you maybe - clothes? I feel like a hooker here, like you're just here to get your rocks off and leave."

Cas shrugs out of the coat, and Dean joins him on the bed to widen the noose of his tie and slip it off, then push the jacket off his shoulders. He hesitates over the shirt, cause he isn't sure he wants totally bare skin here, he needs Cas to retain some semblance of distance, of order, because this isn't just normal naked fun times anymore, and in the end he settles for unbuttoning it but leaving it on. He slips Cas's belt out its loops, gets Cas to kick his shoes off but leave his socks on, then sits back.

"Okay."

"You don't have to do this," Cas says softly, and Dean shakes his head, takes a deep breath and raises the lube.

"We're doing this. You know how to use this?"

"Show me," Cas says, and Dean shuffles closer, squirts a generous amount down the length of Cas's (long, slim) fingers and wraps his own around them, smirking as he twists his wrist, spreading the lube around, then drags his fist up and down Cas's fingers, making sure they're coated in the stuff. "I'm sure manually stimulating my fingers isn't necessary," Cas says dryly, and Dean snickers.

"How do you know? It is actually, I'm not having that stuff all cold and smeared all over my ass. Plus," and he drops Cas's hand and wraps his slippery hand around his own dick, which is perking up again, "it feels awesome." Cas's eyes zero in, pupils visibly dilating like it's the hottest thing he's ever seen, and yeah, that'll do it. Dean lets his head fall back, closes his eyes and amps up the appeciative noises he usually tries to stifle after a lifetime of Sam in the other bed, and almost feels Cas's gaze like a physical thing on his skin.

"Dean," Cas says, almost a growl, and when he opens his eyes to smirk at him Cas grabs him by the scruff of the neck and kisses him, lubed fingers wrapping around his cock and making Dean's hips stutter forward.

"E-easy there Casanova, remember what that's for."

Cas makes a dismissive sound, low in his chest, and pulls him back in. Dean lets him, enjoys the slick heat of his hand on his cock, wraps one arm around Cas's neck and presses closer, until it's just bare skin and the pleasure buzzing under it. 

Eventually Cas breaks the kiss, silently tips their foreheads together again, and Dean shifts his weight forward until Cas gets it and lets him topple them over and down. They end up on their sides, and Dean ducks his head into Cas's chest, breathes his absence of scent, listens to his (borrowed) heart beat, and hooks his leg up over Cas's hip. He hears Cas exhale, slow and steady, then feels his fingers give a final stroke of his cock and draw away, skimming over his thigh and back behind, over the swell of his ass cheek and down between.

Dean doesn't realise he's holding his breath until it rushes out of him on a helpless shudder, whole body flinching. He sucks in another, forces it out slow, and Cas's finger returns, warm and slick, just light feather-soft touches, and it's- bearable. 

He stops anticipating the touch, stops shivering away from it, and in response it becomes gradually longer, more certain, until Cas is following a careful, unbroken line, up and down the cleft of his ass, fingertip slip-sliding easy in the trail of lube.

Dean makes a quiet noise of appreciation for everything Cas is doing here, and stretches so he can press a kiss to the hollow of Cas's throat. And hey, since he's there, he dots a few more across the skin, nothing with an agenda, just there's skin right there under his mouth so he may as well kiss it. Cas's finger drags low, brushing behind his balls, then comes back up, touch a little firmer than before, a little surer.

He can't help the surprised little noise he makes when the next pass of Cas's fingers dips deliberately against the muscle, a fleeting second of extra pressure before they continue up towards his spine. 

"Alright?" Cas asks, a rumble, and Dean nods blindly against his skin. He isn't sure exactly how it feels, actually, but he knows what it _doesn't_ feel like so he's okay to let it continue.

The next slick slide of Cas's fingers repeats the movement, slowing just enough for Cas's fingertip to stroke across the muscle with an edge of extra weight behind it, and the continuing downward path afterwards is a little shorter before Cas's fingers change direction and come back again. Each subsequent sweep is shorter still, Cas decreasing the length of his strokes until finally his fingers still, middle one resting gently in the centre of the curl of muscle.

Dean breathes out.

He can't say he _likes_ it, and if he thinks about it too hard it'll be weird so he doesn't, but it doesn't feel screamingly wrong anymore. He wriggles against Cas's touch.

"C'mon dude, keep going."

"Are you sure?" Cas asks, soft, and shifts like he's gonna make Dean meet his eyes. That would make all this far too real though, removing all plausible deniability that this is happening in some in-between dreamworld where he's just a body chasing sensations, so Dean stubbornly refuses to let him move.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure Cas."

"Dean..."

" _Cas_."


	19. Wincestiel - girl!Cas (period sex tag)

[the later version that would have taken place in the bunker and, apparently, explored Sam's blood kink more]

cas wonders out into the main room, wrapped in a towel but with something off- and then she says “dean, what’s the currently accepted method of dealing with menstruation?” and dean makes a noise like a squashed duck and chokes on his pancake. he hurries off to find their first aid kit and the bandages, and sam tries not to stare at the smears peeking out from the bottom of the towel, at the unabashed blatantness of it all, and tells himself there’s really not a sour-sharp metallic scent to the air, it’s all in his head. cas’s legs are pale now she’s in her own body and doesn’t expose them much, and the crimson stands out, and ruby used to make those ridiculous smug purring noises when he licked the blood from the warm rounded softness of her inner thigh...

*

[the earlier version, where they were at Bobby's]

Dean's just got four beers out the fridge in preparation for the movie when he hears it: a soft, involuntary moan, shuddery and helpless and unmistakably Cas.

"Don t you drop those, boy," Bobby warns, nodding at the beers caught between Dean's fingers, and Dean shoves one at him and bolts for the door. 

Dean's no stranger to the orgasms-cure-cramps thing, has even used the line himself, but surely even shameless, public porn-watching Cas wouldn't jerk off in Bobby's front room? Not without knowing she d get caught...

"Dean," Cas says drunkenly, head rolled back, and Dean swallows hard and watches Sam fail to hide his smirk as he rolls his thumbs in the dip of her lower back, his hands bracketing her waist. "Is this what you refer to as magic fingers? Because I can certainly see why you are so enamoured of them." 

*

They're on _Terminator: Salvation_ when Cas starts shifting again, slipping her hands back between her body and the couch cushions and tipping her head back with a huff of breath.

"Hey," Sam says, low, touching her shoulder and patting his thigh just above his knee when he has her attention. "C'mere Cas, let me." 

Cas slides across onto his lap, weight warm and heavy on his thighs, and Sam spans his hands across her waist and digs his thumbs in, presses them up along her spine and feels her melt, breath rushing out of her. 

Dean's watching them out of the corner of his eye in the flickering light of the TV, the rest of the room in darkness except for the halo of light by the door to the kitchen. The explosion on the screen lights Dean in orange and gold, cheek burnished amber and delineating the flowing lines of his profile, his mouth. The next firestorm catches him tilting his head back as he drinks, the beer lit to a rich tawny gloss.

In front of Sam, Cas is a dark silhouette, made bulky by her hoodie. He pushes it up past her ribs to get closer to her skin, rolls his thumbs in circles in the space between her ribcage and her hips and feels her arch forward to accommodate him, head bowing and little appreciative noises spilling from her mouth, humming in her chest.

"That feel better?" he asks her, and she nods.

"Thank you, Sam." 

"'S no problem," he tells her, following the curve of her spine up a little, bringing his palms round so he can press his fingertips into the muscles too, smoothing them parallel to her spine, and she shivers and leans back into them. He runs his palms back down too, kneading with the heels of his hands at the cramping muscles in her lower back, and she flat-out moans then, unselfconscious and delighted. 

Dean's head snaps round at the sound, and Sam ducks his head to hide his grin, even though he doubts Dean could see in in this half-light.

"Always wondered what girls saw in you, Sammy," he says, just loud enough to be heard over the TV.

"I've been told I'm good with my hands," Sam agrees, not bothering to keep the smirk out of his voice. 

"That's certainly true," Cas says, honest and straight forward as ever, and Sam laughs and slides his hands round to her stomach, rubbing slow, hot circles. Cas makes a muffled little noise and goes boneless, slumping back into his chest.

"Come here," Sam murmurs, wrapping his hands round her hips, and pulls her back until she can rest her head on his shoulder instead. Dean isn't even bothering to watch the movie anymore, and Sam can feel his eyes on them as he keeps the movement of his hands slow and even. 

"Lower," Cas says by his ear, her voice throaty and low, and Sam obligingly slips his fingers under the waistband of his old jeans, hanging loose and low on Cas's hips. Jess used to get nasty cramps just down below her hipbones, and Sam rolls all four fingers in little circles over the hot, taut skin, spiraling in towards Cas's bellybutton and then back out again. " _Nnnyes_ ," Cas breathes, arching herself into Sam's touch, and Sam gently presses her back down without stopping. 

"Shh Cas, I got you." 

Eventually he lets the spirals trail off and drags his hands out and up over her stomach. "Sam," Cas protests, hips lifting shamelessly, and Sam huffs a laugh and gets his hands back on her hips, gently urging her forward again. 

"No Cas, not me," he says into her ear. "Don't ask _me_ ". 

"Dean," she says instantly, turning towards him, and Sam turns too, watching his brother watching Cas, lick unconsciously over his lower lip.

"Yeah, Cas?" 

"You- I want your mouth," Cas says clearly, easy as breathing, and Sam hears Dean's breath hitch, watches him drop immediately down onto the carpet and shuffle round until he can get his fingers round Cas's waistband, yank everything down and away.

"Hook your feet behind my legs," Sam tells her softly, her hair curled around his hands and his fingers flexing against her scalp. He feels her feet curve against the backs of his calves and draws his legs apart, spreading her open. "Yeah, there you go." 

"Dean-" Cas says impatiently, but it dissolves into a shattered gasp as Dean shifts forward with a low noise and buries his face between her legs, hands cupped over her hipbones and thumbs feathering in the soft hollows right at the roots of her thighs. Her head falls helplessly back against Sam's shoulder.

"Feels good, huh Cas?" Sam murmurs into her ear, twisting his wrists slowly, slowly so her hair winds tight around them, silky against his skin. Cas honest-to-god whimpers, tipping her head back into it, and Sam hums approvingly and frees his hands so he can weave her hair through his fingers, tugging at it a little. "You like this, huh. Dean's wanted to do this forever, you have no idea. You should ask him about it sometime, how he used to jerk off thinking about you, about this."

Cas's nails scrabble against the couch cushions, keen building in her throat and legs shaking, and Sam presses his calves carefully further back against the couch, trapping her ankles so she doesn't brain Dean with her thrashing or wrap her legs around his head like she'd so clearly like to and suffocate him. Not that Dean looks like he'd care, eyes closed like he's completely zen-ed out as he does whatever it is he's doing that s making Cas's voice break and her whole body tremble. Dean rides the bucking of her hips easily, his hold on her keeping her from fucking his face too wildly, and when she finally stills he opens his eyes and looks up at her.

His pupils are blown wide, only the thinnest rim of green edging them, and he pulls away just far enough to lick a smear of red from the corner of his mouth. Seems there's still a little vampire left in him after all. Cas makes a small noise and Sam chuckles against the side of her throat. Dean's eyes flick to him for a moment, then back to Cas's as if drawn by a magnet.

"Don't _stop_ ," Cas says, half order and half entreaty, voice husky and canting her hips up, and Dean huffs something that could be a laugh and dips back down, eyes open this time and focused on her, watching for the things that make her mouth fall open, her eyes flicker shut, little wanting sounds hitch in her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...This is ridiculous id fic brought about entirely by my own nasty cramps and no Winchesters to massage them away. In fact, now that I think about it, my [other girl!Cas fic](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/42227311667) also features her on her period, vicariously eating a lot of junk food, so there we go.
> 
> It was actually originally just going to be D/C, but then literally I wrote that bit with Dean hearing Sam giving Cas a quick massage and Sam knowing exactly what it did to Dean, and then I sat back and said to myself "Self, that sounds awfully Wincest-y I can't believe you just accidentally wrote that...but like, since you _have_ written it, don't stop there."
> 
> (and yes yes, I know that when Dean was a vampire Sam was soulless so he wouldn't remember, hush)


	20. 6.09 coda - Cas discovers the fairies' mark

The door’s barely shut behind Sam when Cas turns up, right in Dean’s space and glaring at him even harder than usual. 

“Well look at you, turning up just as the action’s all over,” Dean says, tipping his head up to meet Cas’s eyes, and Cas makes a pissy little noise and jabs two fingers harder than necessary against his temple. “Ow, jesus. Thanks.”

“I really don’t have time for this,” Cas tells him shortly, hand sliding down to catch on Dean’s collar and haul him up off the bed so he can scrutinise him.

“Time for what? And what’s with the meat-market routine?” Dean asks, twisting to follow him, and Cas’s hand lands on his shoulder, holding him still as he circles him. “Dude, seriously, ow. You just healed all my bruises.”

“For you to get abducted and _marked_ by the Fae. As if it wasn’t enough that you have demons and many of Raphael’s supporters after you.”

“Marked?” Dean squints down at himself like he’s suddenly gonna see some kind of glowy graffiti. “Well can’t you just, y’know, bathe it in holy light or whatever and wash it off?”

“No,” Cas says curtly, still eyeing him up. “The Fae are very old and very powerful, and you shouldn’t have gotten involved.”

“Hey, _they_ abducted _me_! And then they tried to _violate_ me! _I’m_ not the one you should be pissed at, here!”

Cas sighs. “Dean, you are still far too reckless. I am aware that my war means nothing to you, except as a minor inconvenience when it prevents me coming to your aid, but even so I would have thought that the last two years would have made you aware of the dangers posed to you by both Heaven and Hell.”

“Hey, that is not-”

Cas holds up a hand, and Dean’s throat sticks. “Be quiet. Raphael and many of his followers want you and your brother dead because you prevented the Apocalypse. Those demons who escaped Crowley’s cull want the same, and I suspect there are others who would simply take the opportunity if it arose for their own reasons. Now the Fae will hunt you too because you managed to escape, wounding several of their number in the process. In addition to all that, in the last _three months alone_ you have also been transformed into a vampire and held captive by a goddess. You are rash, Dean, and heedless of the consequences should you die, not least of which is that Sam would not longer be constrained by your morality and free to do as he pleased. I am no longer at liberty to sit on your shoulder, and there may come a time soon when I will be unable to protect you at all. Perhaps you should think about that before you choose to throw yourself into any further danger.”

“Yeah, cause hunting’s a freakin’ cakewalk!” Dean snaps back, finally free to speak again. “I just _choose_ all the dangerous jobs to piss you off. And hey, we managed to get yourselves out of the whole vampire situation _and_ the Veritas thing just fine without you, okay, cause we don’t _need_ you lookin’ over our shoulders. Exactly how _have_ you helped us since you saw fit to come on down off your cloud anyway, huh? All you’ve done is kidnap and molest kids, hook up with some old buddy of yours, pronounce Sam soulless after some more molesting, and only even bother to show up if it sounds like it could be useful to your heavenly buddies. Yeah, you’ve been a _real_ help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This would have gone on to become angry, aggressive, marking and claiming porn.


	21. 6.20 AU - Cas admits the deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired almost wholly by Fefe Dobson's song "Stutterin'", which I would have vidded The Man Who Would Be King to rather than written this if I had any skill at vidding at all.

Dean thunks back down onto the couch, stares down at his hands hanging between his knees and the shadows on the floor from the sigils drawn on the window. Not that they're apparently any use. Probably he should be going through Bobby's books again and trying to figure out what they did wrong, but he just...can't bring himself to do it right now. Cas seems so damn _stubborn_ about what he's doing, obstinate enough to ignore Dean asking him to stop despite everything they've been through together, and that's... There has to be a way for Dean to get through to him, cause he's gotta know this cannot end well.

 _Castiel_ , he thinks as hard as he can, leaning back against the sofa and closing his eyes, _get your feathery ass back here, we gotta talk about this. We both know this is seriously screwed up. Please. Cas. Come on, Castiel, it's not like we're_ actually _angel-proofed or anything. Castiel._ He figures the more he repeats Cas's name the more it'll bug him - he has no idea how prayers work, but names have power and Cas always turns up when Dean prays using his full name. _Castiel, Castiel, Castiel. Just get down here, you stubborn jackass, come on. I can do this all night. Castiel Castiel Castiel._

"That is intensely aggravating," Cas says from right in front of him, flat and clipped, and Dean does _not_ jump at the sound of his voice.

"Looks like it worked though." Cas is all but touching Dean's knees, eyes fixed on his face, shadowed and emotionless. "Look man, you have got to stop just bliping out like that, we need to talk about this."

"I was under the impression there was nothing more to say," Cas says crisply. "I won't break my agreement with Crowley, and you feel you have to stop me because you can't abide it."

Dean scrubs his hands over his face. "No, no I can't 'abide it' Cas, I'm sorry. I know you think you've got it under control or whatever, but it's _Crowley_ , okay, he will find a way to screw you over."

"You've dealt with him in the past," Cas says, still flat and dispassionate, "and I recall he gave Bobby back the use of his legs of his own free will."

Dean exhales hard and stares up at him. "Yeah, but it was hardly out of the goodness of his heart now, was it? It just made more sense to have five people with working legs than four. Are you- please tell me you're not trying to redeem him or something, cause I do _not_ want him in my Heaven when I die." 

"He wouldn't be in your Heaven."

Dean can't take that cold gaze staring down at him anymore, and pushes himself to his feet. Cas shifts back the barest step to accommodate him. "Damn it Cas, why do you even _need_ him? Why is he so important? You're a freakin' _angel_ , and God likes you so much he keeps bringin' you back from the dead. What the hell do you need some smarmy bastard like Crowley for?"

A muscle twitches in Cas's jaw, eyes skittering away for a moment. "I told you. He's close to finding Purgatory, and all the souls within. And he's been...useful to me in the fight against Raphael."

Dean throws his arms out. "Why, what the fuck _else_ have you two been doing? And anyway, why the fuck did you go to _him_ instead of us? I thought we were your friends! What, we're just little puny humans, we can't do anything? We've still got those angel swords from last year, and, oh yeah, I fucking killed Zachariah!"

"You think I would want you in the middle of this?" Cas snaps, suddenly right back in Dean's space, the trenchcoat catching against his shirt. "I'm _doing_ all this to _keep you safe_."

"Yeah? Well thanks Cas, but we can take care of ourselves-"

"No," Cas growls, "you can't. In the last six months alone you've been turned into a vampire, held captive by a goddess and abducted by the Fae.”

“Yeah, well then where were you?”

“ _Fighting_ a _war_. As I told you before, I am not here to perch on your shoulder; you and Sam are resourceful, I knew you would most likely resolve the situation without me.”

“Sorry, I thought you just said you wanted to keep us safe?”

“I _do_ keep you safe! Do you how many times I've saved you from Raphael's agents this year alone?"

Dean has a flash of a suit and a shining sword, a Cas-shaped dent in the car under their window; Balthazar frantically rooting through Bobby's draws for the right ingredients, one side of his shirt bloody; Cas facing off against Raphael, furious, wings bristling across the wall behind him. "I dunno, a couple?"

"Seven," Cas says grimly. "Most of them you were never even aware of, but Raphael knows that if he gets to you he can use you against me."

Dean stares at him. "I- Seriously? Well what, do we get angel-bodyguards or something?"

Cas's eyes bore into his. "I don't trust anyone else. You're too precious to me to entrust to another's care."

And god, he just comes out with things like that, and what the hell is Dean meant to _say_? "Yeah?" he manages finally, looking away from that frank, freakish stare. "What about the demons that attacked us today? Pretty sure _those_ were from your pal Crowley. If we're that...important to you, why're you still working with him if he pulls shit like that?"

Cas hisses in a breath. "It's not that _simple_ , Dean-"

Dean snorts. "No, nothing's ever simple with you, is it Cas? _Crowley_ is a _demon_ , is the _King_ of freakin' _Hell_. We do not form alliances with the King of freakin' Hell! What's so hard to understand about that?"

Cas's jaw tenses. "You dealt with a demon to bring Sam back. Your _father_ -"

Dean laughs, short and bitter. "Yeah, and Crowley got Bobby's soul last year, I know. And look where it got us, Cas. Dad died and went to Hell. _I_ died and went to Hell. Samuel was willing to give Sam and me up to Crowley if it just got Mom back; his own _family_. Demon deals _never_ have a happy ending, okay? So you have to stop it, now, before it goes bad."

"That's not a choice I can make."

"What the _fuck_ , of course it's-"

"I _need_ Crowley to assist me in finding Purgatory so that I can defeat Raphael."

"Oh yeah, fucking dig up _Purgatory_ , what an excellent fucking idea! Come _on_ Cas, how stupid _are_ you? Crowley’s just _using_ you, and you're just too much of a fuckin' _child_ -” 

"Stop _calling_ me that Dean, I am older than you can comprehend-"

"Then it's even more pathetic that you haven’t even got the balls to tell him to-" and the rest of the sentence is lost a coughed-out gasp as his back hits the wall.

"Don't presume to talk about what you don't understand," Cas says, low and measured, and his hand on Dean's chest is heavy as stone. _I dragged you out of Hell, I can throw you back in._

Dean sucks in a breath and narrows his eyes. It’s been a while since Cas last got pissed at him. “Oh, I think I understand just fine.”

“No, you don’t.” Cas’s eyes are almost glowing in the darkness, the faint promise of fury shining through. “I can’t just ‘stop it’, Dean, because the deal has already been made. Fifty thousand souls have already been loaned to me to prevent an immediate apocalypse, and despite my best efforts, that debt can only be re-payed with souls from Purgatory.”

Dean stares at him, and when he swallows it feels like Cas’s hand on his chest is crushing him, making it hard to breathe. “You- you already made a deal?”

“There was no other way to protect all that we worked so hard to save.”

“ _So you ate a bunch of souls from Hell_?” Dean sags against the wall, Cas’s hand the only thing holding him up. “You- _Cas_ , what- How could you-?”

“If I hadn’t, Raphael would have obliterated me and then reopened the Cage,” Cas says quietly, and lets him go. 

Dean stumbles a little, then catches himself against the wall, still staring at him like he’s never seen him before. Cas... after everything he knows Dean did in Hell, everything he must have seen, he still just moseyed on down there and used all those broken, bleeding, desperate souls as, as what, a quick fix, a power snack? He closes his eyes, sickened at even the idea. His voice, though, comes out surprisingly calm. “You, uh. You should go, Cas. Sam or Bobby might come down.” Unspoken is the reminder that they’re no longer as tolerant or as willing to listen to him as Dean was.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas says, low and intense and desperate, “it was all to keep you safe. All of it. You and Bobby and Sam, you’re all-”

“I don’t- Cas, I don’t wanna hear it. Just- go.”


	22. Dean and Cas get married in Heaven

Dean blinks at the ceiling. It’s white, and kinda swirly, and there’s a chandelier hanging from it. He’s pretty sure the kinds of rooms that have chandeliers are out of their price range.

Also, his face it itchy.

He lifts a hand to scratch it, and little bits of coloured paper flake off, landing on his chest. His bare chest.

Also, he can’t move his other arm. 

He cranes his head back and twists himself round, rucking the sheet up even further, and finds that his wrist is connected to the headboard by a very familiar blue tie.

Okay then.

>   
> _”Make me,” Dean says, breathless and daring, and a second later he hits the bed, mattress giving soft under him like a freakin’ cloud, and Cas is above him, hand splayed over his crossed wrists and holding him as effortlessly as if Dean was already cuffed._
> 
> __
> 
> _Cas’s hand goes to his throat, pulling at the already-loosened tie, and it unravels under his hand._

The knot’s pulled pretty tight, but never let it be said that Dean Winchester can’t get out of anything he got himself into, and eventually it comes free. Dean massages the reddened skin on his wrist and takes stock of the situation.

The room is huge, plush and amazing, and the only blemishes are the clothes scattered on the floor, shoes and socks and Dean’s jeans crumpled where they fell. The bed is practically its own continent, everything so stuffed full of feathers it feels like he’s floating on a giant marshmallow; the million pillows are kind of disarrayed, and a few have fallen onto the floor, and the sheet is all messed up and pulled free of its moorings. 

There’s also the part where he is very, very naked and there is an honest-to-god white, frilly garter digging into his thigh.

>   
> _”The_ fuck _?!” Dean says, kicking his other foot free of his jeans automatically and staring down at the_ thing _on his leg. “Fucking_ Gabriel _. I already had the damn_ veil _-”_
> 
> _“Leave it on,” Cas says intently, voice gone down another friggin’ octave, and winds his fingers in it, kissing Dean and stripping him of his underwear with his other hand._
> 
> _“Kinky,” Dean says approvingly, distracting Cas’s thoroughly by groping him through the pants he still has on. “Why am I the only one naked here?”_  
> 

Dean’s first thought is to call Cas, but something tells him there will be others with a better explanation. “BALTHAZAR!” 

There’s a flutter of wings at the foot of the bed. “Dean?” 

“...What the hell happened last night.”

“You don’t remember? Lord, don’t tell Cassy that, you’ll break his heart.” Balthazar comes closer, adjusting his glittery cowboy hat. The pink feather boa draped across his chest sways a little with his movement. “You really don’t remember anything? At all?”

“No.”

“Oh dear.” Balthazar’s mouth twitches and he looks away, clearly fighting a smile. “Well, I suppose you aren’t the first.” 

“The first _what_?”

“The first person to wake up in Vegas with no clue how he got there and a shiny new ring on his finger.”

Dean can only gape at him and make vague spluttering noises, then stares down at his left hand. It’s still bare.

“Metaphorically, of course,” Balthazar adds. “Being as how you aren’t _actually_ in Vegas, because you’re dead.”

Even Dean’s _brain_ starts spluttering then. Then, like a veil lifting (ahaha _ha_ ), it all comes back in a rush.

>   
> _There is a party, complete with banners and cakes and an open bar and streamers and party poppers and balloons and a section of Heaven made to look like an expensive Vegas hotel/casino, courtesy of Gabriel, party planner extraordinaire. It’s full of people they’ve known and loved and mourned, and they’ve found a little square of couches in the middle and set up court there to just drink it all in, Jess in Sam’s lap and beaming at him, Mary and John opposite watching them with soft eyes, and Cas generally perched at Dean’s side, knees pressed together. Sam had been worried that he’d have to tell Jess everything that happened since her death, but she puts a hand over his mouth and tells him it’s okay, while Mary explains that everyone’s heaven lets them watch loved ones if they so wish, and that for the last few years everyone’s been congregating in the Roadhouse to watch Winchestervision like it was a big football game._
> 
> _Cas drops down next to Dean and leans into him. He smells faintly of honey. “Hey, where’d you go?” Dean asks, and Cas smiles, slow and warm._
> 
> _“Gabriel has procured me some genuine mead,” he explains. “He seems to have anticipated my fondness for it.”_
> 
> _Later, there’s Gabe and Anna laughing and manhandling the coat off Cas’s shoulders and down his arms while Cas twists like a cat chasing string. “See, now you look a thousand times less like a creepy flasher,” Gabriel tells him, and Anna throws Dean a wink and broad, bright grin._
> 
> _Bobby and his wife are sitting in a corner, talking quietly with their fingers folded together. Rufus drifts over for a while to chat with them, arm resting on top of the booth._
> 
> _Jo is giggling with Gabe, which can only lead to bad things. Dean would voice this thought, but he’s too enthralled by Balthazar hitting on Ellen, and Ellen_ not _immediately punching him in the face for being a giant British skeeze._
> 
> _And it's cute how Ash thinks he’s being subtle, eyeing up that blonde angel Dean thinks might once have been Cas’s bitchy secretary._
> 
> _Pamela flops down on the other couch, bra stuffed full of cash she just won from one of the machines. “This is a fan-fucking-tastic party,” she proclaims happily, re-settling the orange cocktail umbrella tucked behind her ear. “The only thing that could make it better would be a Vegas wedding.”_
> 
> _The grandma Dean’s only just met turns to look at him and Sam with a Gabe-like glint in her eye. John muffles a snigger and Mary grins, eyebrows raised challengingly. Jess just laughs, shaking her head where it’s resting against Sam’s shoulder._
> 
> _And then there’s Gabriel’s hand, flat on Dean’s head and strangely heavy. His voice booms out across the quiet room, ringing with glee. “By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you angel and wife. Go for it, baby bro,” and Cas wraps a hand around the back of Dean’s neck and kisses him like their combined friends and family aren’t hooting and hollering in the background._  
> 

“Ah, realization dawns,” Balthazar says cheerfully. “It really was an excellent party, you know.” 

> _Confetti rains down on him and manages to work its evil, tickling way under his shirt._
> 
> _Cas’s skin is warm as he thumbs frosting off the corner of Dean’s mouth._
> 
> _Jo is waving a hundred-dollar bill at a male stripper - Gabe latest conjuring trick - and Pamela is teasing Sam with a sheaf of them if he’ll just take his shirt off. Jess giggles and leans in to whisper in his ear._
> 
> _Gabe is cackling as Dean rips off the white veil he just manifested and throws it back at him, and he’s still laughing as Cas’s hand slides up onto Dean’s shoulder and they zap away. The room they end up in big and white and blissfully free of interfering archangels, but that’s all Dean gets to think about it before Cas crowds him back against the wall and all the blood in Dean’s brain goes south._

“It, uh- was it, I mean-” 

“It’s not ah, legally binding, no,” Balthazar supplies. “This is Heaven, not Earth. We don’t need all your funny human bits of paper and metal to seal a relationship.”

“Oh. Uh, great. Where is Cas, anyway?”

Balthazar grins. “Were he human, I believe he’d drinking coffee on a park bench and feeding ducks his breakfast. Oh, he certainly doesn’t _regret_ it, he’s just giving you some space.”

“What, does he think I’m gonna do a Britney and divorce him?” Dean asks indignantly, and Balthazar shrugs.

“Inebriation does not facilitate good decision-making. He’s just being cautious. It’s a character fault.”

“Idiot,” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “CASTIEL!”

Cas turns up on the other side of the bed. He’s only got one sock on, and all his buttons are done up wrong, baring a slice of his hip on one side and a sizable chunk of collarbone and chest on the other. He’s never really gotten the hang of buttons.

“Mornin’, sunshine!” Dean says brightly, and Cas relaxes infinitesimally. “The fuck have you been?”

“I thought it best to allow you to regain your memories of last night in your own time,” Cas answers, watching him closely.

“Oh, you mean the memories of that time you got really drunk and let your asshole brother _marry_ us? Yeah, they’re back.”

Cas’s hesitates, just a little. “...And how do you feel about them?”

Dean huffs like he can’t even be bothered to dignify that with an answer.

“Oh, stop being such an arse,” Balthazar says, rolling his eyes. “Cas, it’s fine. Really. Just ignore him.”

“You couldn’t have untied me before you left?” Dean demands, and Cas shrugs one shoulder - again, something he’s never quite gotten the hang of - and endeavors to look like human social niceties are still beyond him, though it doesn’t manage to reach his eyes, which are dark and wicked.

“It ensured your inability to run away. Also, I had hoped that you might be ameanable to leaving them on for later."


	23. RPF - D/C goes canon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also [continued](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/50341748343) on my tumblr.

[Dean’s obviously just had Cas up against the wall, all charged and intense, but now Jensen’s just laughing, shaking his head and stepping back, and Misha joins in. Jared wanders into the shot from one side, smirking, and Jensen straightens up and points at him accusingly]  
Jensen: Get off the set!  
[Jared pulls an innocent face, eyes wide and hand on chest.]  
Jared: Me? I didn’t even-!  
Jensen: Yeah you did, you’re making Misha laugh!  
Jared: Misha?!  
[Misha cackling in the background, and the crew snickering too] 

Fan: So, what was it like kissing Jensen?  
[Misha leans back in his seat, smirking]  
Misha: That’s- the rest of you can go back to your seats, that’s what you all wanted to ask too, right? Yeah, exactly, I thought so. And I thought I was finally gonna get some questions with depth and substance. What was it like? Exactly the same as kissing anyone else, there weren’t, you know, fireworks or anything. Little sparkles, choirs of angels. Oh, you meant different from kissing a _girl_? ...Still no difference. I- you’ve seen his mouth, right?  
[audience whoops. Misha looks amused, then mock-thoughtful.]  
Misha: I have to say though, I think Jared’s better.

Fan: There was some uh, debate about how Cas might be asexual, but uh, clearly that’s not true now. Was that something you ever thought about playing him as?  
Misha: Yeah, I think that’s been kind of blown out the water. I thought- I mean, the future episode made it pretty clear he was, you know, having sex and doing drugs and all that fun stuff, but I guess that Cas was kind of different from the normal one. But there was the Meg kiss too! And the porn! And you know, it’s not like any of the other angels were keeping it in their pants either, and I think if you’re friends with Balthazar, sooner or later you’ll- he’ll get you into some vice or other.  
Fan: But the- when they went to the brothel, he looked so terrified!  
Misha: Ah, but that’s because it was a den of iniquity. There was all this sin everywhere, like when they use those blacklights on CSI? Cas has like, blacklight-angel-vision. And that was right after he left heaven, you know, humanity was still a foreign concept to him. By the whole porn and kissing Meg thing he was all nicely corrupted. 

Fan: Did Cas sort of imprint on Dean, and that’s why they ended up together? Like, just because Dean’s a guy, that meant Cas was gay cause he fell in love with him?  
Misha: Love? This is just sex! They’re just fuckbuddies, don’t even _mention_ the L word! Seriously, Cas has only just got Dean into bed, he’ll run a mile. No, I mean- you mean like if Dean had been a girl, Cas would’ve been straight? Doesn’t kissing Meg count? [audience makes dismissive noises] Oh, you didn’t like that? Well no, you guys would’ve liked him to be tonguing Crowley, right? Or Dean, obviously. I don’t think of Cas- he isn’t really gay _or_ straight, those are human labels. But there is that bond there with Dean, yes, which means that they would’ve ended up together even if Dean been a starfish or something. What? Bestiality not allowed? Oh, so you’ll write all these debauched orgys of Cas sucking cock and fucking pie or whatever, but no starfishfuking? Oh, okay then. Well, you know what? Cas tops. Dean’s _obviously_ overcompensating, all that macho bullshit, you know he loves getting fucked really. Yeah, I said it. ...You’re all gonna tell Jensen I said that later, aren’t you? [laughs]


	24. RPF AU - everyone's a girl

SUPERNATURAL Season 5

[It’s a grey and rainy day. The camera pans around the trailers and finds Misha, all bundled up in a raincoat with the hood up and clutching a coffee. She offers a grin.]  
Camera guy: Morning, Misha. Looking forward to today?  
Misha: [smirk] Oh yeah. It’s always a good day when you get to beat up your co-star. 

[Jen’s sitting in the makeup chair while the makeup artist applies her bloody lip. She quirks an eyebrow at the camera in the mirror.]

[Jen and Misha, in costume, are mucking around on set while the crew fiddle with the equipment, standing close and shoving at each other, laughing, each trying to overbalance the other. Misha goes windmilling backwards and Jen raises victory arms.]

Castiel: [furious and dropping to a growl] I rebelled for this? So that you could _surrender_ to them?  
[Deanna stares at her, but it’s not quite the dazed look of the recently-punched.]  
Jen: [after a beat, laughing] Jesus, Mish! You’re gonna cause minor earthquakes with that!

[Jen and Misha are taking the opportunity to rehearse the wall-slams with the stunt dudes while they aren’t needed on set.  
Misha: So I- [grabs Jen by the jacket and swings her round in slow-motion]  
Stunt guy: Yeah, and then you- [mimes throwing a punch, and Misha nods and copies him, crowding into Jen’s space. She says something and Jen laughs with her whole body, relying on Misha’s grip on her jacket to balance her.] 

[Cas has Deanna pinned to the wall, Deanna bloody and both of them panting, eyes locked. The silence stretches on, then Misha says or does something and in unison they break, Jen smacking hard at Misha’s shoulder as she laughs.] 

[Jen, sitting in her chair while not needed on set and drinking coffee. She looks terrible, eye bruised and cheek red and blood down her chin. When she grins at the camera, her teeth are crimson.]  
Jen: Hot, right? Yeah, I know. [model face] 

[Jen climbs back up from her knees, smiling, and pushes playfully at Misha as she passes her. Misha hip-checks her back and Jen half-bulldozes her into the wall in return, both of them laughing.] 

* 

canon jensen and misha have to deal with scripts where their characters seem 'too gay', lady jen and misha have to deal with scripts that sound like rejected girls gone wild screenplays. esp since the network found fandom and figured lady UST = ratings so win/win/win. 

"can you just- try and NOT look like you wanna rip my shirt off with your teeth?" jen says finally, throwing her hands up, and misha shrugs, grins. behind her, edlund and singer are looking thoughtful, though for different reasons. "NO" jen adds for good measure, leveling the finger of doom at them, and edlund quirks an eyebrow, mouth twitching. 

_oh for fuck's sake_ she thinks next take, when misha's back in her face and pining her to a wall and they should've broken for lunch ten minutes ago, and she counts off the requisite soulful stare then grabs misha by the hair and mashes their mouths together. misha's squeak is subliminal, felt only because they're pressed together chest to chest, and her knuckles flex against jen's - deanna's - jacket as she rolls with it and uses the grip to keep jen - deanna - close. 

"cut!" yells the director, and immediately the crew are hooting and hollering good naturedly, wolf-whistles and catcalls thrown in for good measure, and misha's watching her with raised eyebrows, amused. 

"what?" jen asks, matching her expression, then, louder, "there! you got it! can we have lunch now?!" 

(misha's thigh inbetween jen's during one of the wall-slams) 

(misha walking her fingers up jen's wrist during some deep conversation, smirking cause it's not her coverage) 

(jen retaliating by stroking her toes up misha's leg under the table and getting her feet in her lap) 


	25. misc. random snippets

asexual!Cas! ("sex? but that seems messy and unnecessary" and dean blows out this huge relieved breath and is like "WELL THEN okay let's do this thing" and then they're ridic and schmoopy and cuddly and sometimes dean has sex with teh ladiez because they're willing and a dude has needs but cas is his forever home)

*

HEADCANON - Dean knows Rocky Horror because whatserface with the pink panties had made him watch it prior to said request, and they were in fact a compromise from the full Frankie. Also, eyeliner. They were 19 and really stoned and Dean had a lot of feeeelings about Rocky dying because he was a monster. The panties were Rhonda's, slipped off under her skirt while Dean watched and when he puts them on, they're slick and damp from the making out they were doing five minutes before.

*

that one fic where Cas pops up at Bobby's late at night when Dean's Doing Research, and Dean protests that Sam or Bobby could hear and Cas's eyes glitter, then he's stripping off his tie, tying it over Dean's mouth, and going down on him right there under the desk.

*

2014!Cas and the first time he has sex with Dean (shoulder massages and ignoring all the signs that Dean's brooding over Sam again, and spat accusations of his being too high to care about anything any more and wall slamming and Cas just utterly unconcerned and kissing him like he knows it's all Dean needs. It isn't, but he'll take it.)

*

Death in the TARDIS bemoaning the stupidity and self-absorbtion of humans while the Doctor stays quiet in the background (post 7.01)

*

Condemned!Cas, who was hauled up to Heaven after 7.02 for crimes against everything and the Winchesters are yanked up for his trial because they aided and abetted/the angels felt they should see the consequences

*

Termeraire!verse Jensen/Misha, where Captain Collins has something of a scandalous reputation but Jensen and Jared find him refreshing and engaging and quick-witted, and his dragon Anaximander not half as scary as gossip would have his kind. Captain Vantoch takes a little more getting used to, especially as she's quite happy to take brandy and play cards with the men and always turns up in male attire (Captain Collins once volunteered to wear a dress in trade when Jensen expressed his mild discomfort at this, and Jensen was struck quite dumb at the thought). Her Longwing is also delighted by Lady Padalecki's pregnancy ("Oh! You have an egg! I hope it does not make you as nauseous as Vicki's did, it was most disagreeable.") and Gen does remarkably well for having an eye the size of her head examining her enthusiastically.

*

Kingdom Hospital crossover, in which Dean freezes at the sight of Otto all "You!" and Otto blinks at him and repeats bemusedly "Me?". Paul is slinky and actually helpful but Dr Gottreich's bones are kind of under the foundations and lot of concrete so maybe they have to go to the Old Kingdom, and then there's freakin' GIANT ANTEATER who SPEAKS (and kind of sounds like he's stoned) and then Cas pops up and is all "Anubis, I think you have lingered here long enough," and then its not an anteater but some goth kid with too-long hair and too much leather and eyeliner who examines them all with interest then tells Cas it's none of his damn business what he does.

*

uh, some kind of gen Glee crossover, where they have to stop at Burt's because there's a problem with the Impala and Kurt and Blaine (and Finn and Rachel) are around and Dean has to reevaluate his opinions of gays when Kurt shrugs into a pair of overalls and wriggles his way under the car to pass Dean some wrench or something and Blaine's off to the side all "Oh, yeah, he's good at this sort of thing *__*"

*

surprised!Cas, who genuinely only loves Dean in the only way he knows, which is devoted but strictly non-sexy, and Dean has his Big Gay Crisis and then corners Cas and asks if he likes him, and Cas blinks at him all "Of course I like you, Dean" and Dean runs his hands though his hair and is all "No, I mean like like" and Cas frowns, aware he's asking something serious but unable to quite parse it because it's never even occured to him, and they go a few more rounds of Dean not really saying what he means, and then finally he just lunges forward and kisses Cas. It's clumsy and awkward and leaves Cas eyeing him in perplexity while absently touching his mouth, and the he says slowly "No Dean, I have never wanted to do that to you," but not in a negative way, just because he never even thought of it. Um, and then they're all awkward until Cas kisses Dean weeks later and then they go on ~voyages of sexual discovery~ together (at first Cas is weird about actually letting his body do stuff by itself, so Dean has to jerk off in front of him and tell him how good it feels and what he wants Cas to do to him to get him interested).

*

Gabriel turning up in a party hat and throwing a handful of confetti at the boys because he says he's celebrating his little brother's promotion. Dean's all "Someone put Balthazar in charge of stuff?!" and Gabriel snorts and says even Heaven's democracy isn't that stupid, and Sam's all "...Cas?" When Cas shows up they make him show them his new wings, and he gets all bashful.

*

Winchester's + baby monsters, kthx. (Eve?) The dragon is using Sam as a launchpad, the werewolf is eating Dean's shoelaces, the shifter is really hard to keep track of, the skinwalker and phoenix are curled up in a corner asleep, and the vampire and wraith have to be constantly supervised. The baby demon is surprisingly cute, but won't let Dean anywhere near him and cries for Sam, and the angel's the opposite and likes to snuggle into the handprint (Dean jokes about Sam and Ruby, Sam shoots back about Anna/Cas). 

*

killjoys AU! Sam and Dean (Morningstar/Blood Junkie (Dean thinks it's funny) and Hellblazer, or more commonly, Morn and Blaze) run an autoshop out in the middle zones, fixing up vehicles (and other mechanical stuff) and repurposing/cannibalizing Drac bikes. Cas (Hell's Angel) was a Drac who got Dean out when the scarecrows caught him; he told Dean his full name, but since he's a wanted man Dean mostly calls him Thursday (Sam is a mythology geek, their mother used to tell them stories about angels). Bobby is their Dr D, Ash usually his messenger unless it's his step-daughter Jo (who kind of has a thing for Dean). They've a shifting roster of "angels" who go into Battery and get them stuff they need, never the same one twice.

*

BDSM!verse Dean/Cas, where they're staying with some really traditional hunter who won't even give them the time of day if they don't have subs. Collaring Sam is out, cause this hunter knows what they look like from the Hendricksen thing (or something), so it has to be Cas. Dean's worried Cas'll screw it up and gives him a bunch of pointers, as well as permission to read his mind if he isn't sure, but he's actually perfect and it's kinda hot.

*

Eon/Eona AU. Dean is the crown prince, Cas summoned as the latest angel to the court, Ruby is Lady Dela (she spends most of the second half in a man's body because they're on the run, and Cas starts in Claire's body) and Sam gets to be Riko/the second prince. Crowley is probably Lord Ido (though they need him more because he knows about Purgatory than to train Cas), and Nick was John's brother who's been possessed by the long-lost archangel Lucifer, with YED as his lieutenant. Gabe and Anna are the heads of the resistance, and Balthazar was Cas's friend at the palace who he told to get out while he could. Instead of the chain of pearls, Cas intends to open Purgatory and use that power to defeat Lucifer.

*

Bobby in Heaven, post-Death's Door, found by Ash and Rufus but having to pass through a bunch of charred, burning heavens and (bodies with) wings scorched into the grass. "What the hell happened?" he asks, shocked and with a sinking feeling, and Rufus snorts and says "Hell's about right, I reckon. Some crazy, hopped-up angel went all Columbine on 'em, we heard him declaimin' about him being their new god and them having to obey him." He slants a sideways glance at Bobby. "Think he's gone though, we haven't heard anything else since and the ones that're left have finally come creeping out of hiding and started the clean up. I gotta say though, I kinda see where he's coming from. All the ones we've tried to talk to have just blanked us like we're bugs on the floor." "Yeah well, they're not really talkers," Bobby says absently, and Rufus grins, sharp and unpleasant. "And you'd know, huh Bobby? Word is you've known your fair share of angels, and you even knew the crazy son-of-a that did all this." "Yeah, I knew 'im," Bobby says wearily, "or I thought I did." "Turns out maybe none of us knew him really," he tells Ellen later, staring at the wood of the bar. "Broke the boy's hearts, especially Dean's. Boy thought he'd finally found someone to lean on, and then Cas goes nuclear on him, scrambles Sam's brains, goes on a killin' spree and walks himself into a lake. And now on top of that there's me, and honest-to-god Ellen, you should probably make up the guest beds cause I'm pretty sure they can't take much more of this." "I don't think anyone could," Ellen says softly, eyes bright, and slides him another scotch.

*

fae!Cas AU. He got Dean out of hell cause he doesn't want earth destroyed, and takes a lot of amusement in baiting uriel and zachariah when they turn up. like alastair, he refers to them as 'you celestials', and he's a weird mix of 2014!cas and normal. 'cas' is the name he gives them to call him, though zachariah finds out his true name and then the winchesters know it too, though they only use it as a summoning aid. cold iron works as well as the banishing sigil, esp as the winchesters tend to have it around more readily than blood. 

*

the 7.21 AU where they come back to get Cas only to find him huddled in a corner of solitary, the material round the walls shredded, furniture smashed, and the bedframe twisted and warped while he mutters to himself about bees and chews nervously at the sleeves of his straitjacket. Debris crunches underfoot, and they turn stunned, furious eyes on Meg, who shrugs. "What was I supposed to do? Stop him?"

*

"that guy's staring at your ass." "yeah?" "YEAH" "huh." when dean goes over though, the guy barely even looks up from his work, just says wearily "I wasn't sexually objectifying you, I was merely studying the bipedal gait for my evolutionary anthropology thesis," and gestures at the papers scattered across the tabletop, most of which seem to feature skeletons. "wow, you're serious," dean says. "well, that's orginial." and this time the guy looks up...slowly. "still sure you aren't objectifying me there, doc creeper?" dean asks, amused, and the guy doesn't blush or backtrack, just says "sorry, but your [science for bowlegs] are fascinating." "nope, can't say i've heard that one before either," dean says, now thoroughly intrigued. "i'm dean, by the way, so you got a name to go with those uh [bowlegs]" "castiel" he replies, with the face of someone who can guess the next sentence is gonna be 'wow weird is that like an angel or something'; Dean swallows them back, says instead "so, i gotta run through all my terrible bone puns to get you to give me your number?" Castiel blinks, a tiny frown appearing between his eyes, then vanishing a second later when his eyes crinkle in amusement. "now i'm curious, how many do you have?" "...none right now, but i'll text 'em to you when i think of them. c'mon." and Dean writes his number on nearest corner of a sheet. Apparently bemused but willing, Cas writes his on Dean's wrist. Dean goes home and looks up anthro jokes, sends a few to cas, then gets distrated by anthro major fox and finishes with "i really dig the way you locamote bipedally. you free at 9?" they get sort of drunk, and sex happens.  
The next day, dean gets cornered by balthazar, uriel, anna and rachel, who tell him in no uncertain terms that if he fucks cas over, they fuck him up. dean is mostly bemused that they care so much, though also thinks it's kind of awesome cas has such great friends. maybe balthazar says something, but a few days/weeks later dean comes hurtling back to cas's room and blurts out "that was your first time?! why didn't you say?!" "it seemed like it would ruin the mood" cas says dryly, leaning in the doorway in his white lecturing-students-eep shirt, tan waistcoat loose and open to show the blue silk lining. dean takes in the view, quirks an eyebrow. "you wanna uh, repeat the experience? see if your hypothesis holds up?" cas blinks, swallows. "yes. definitely."  
sex continues to happen, especialy when cas is stressed and dean blows him under the desk, possibly in the office as well as his room. "we should have penatrative sex" cas says one evening at the bar, lowering the bottle from his lips, and dean chokes. "jesus cas! you can't just...say things like that! now i have beer in my sinuses and a fuckin' semi, thanks a lot." "one of those sounds promising" cas says, sly, and dean kicks him in the ankle.

*

the one where pagans are treated with respect, my god. As dean says, "so...the witches are the good guys and we have to gank the thing killing them? must be opposite day". it ends up being a local (pastor?) who can't stand the heathens "corrupting the town", aided by an (fallen?) angel (because he prayed for help and humans/the unrighteous need to be wiped out). Featuring a Winchester-disrupted coven meeting wherein Cas grabs dean by the wrist and snaps "don't break the circle" (sam can feel the power, thanks), a drawn-down hecate (and cerunnos?) wondering why she/they should trust them when destruction and death follow in their wake, and the local ecclectic pagan who attends the covens because she likes the sense of community and many of their beliefs overlap but who doesn't actually identify as wiccan - cas resets her crystals when dean fiddles with them, and she'll take none of their shit ("so, this your nimbus 2000? what, you fly to coven meetings on it?" "no, I take the car. it's cold this time of year." "so where's your magic wand?" "*eyebrow* in my bedside drawer.")  
it starts when they find carvings and bags at the victim's houses, that they all have stuff (jewelery? spell knots/pouches?) from the same girl, but cas says it's purely protective, not malicious. "so, hex bag?" dean asks, rubbing through the material of the bag, and sam frowns down at the runes. "no, i don't think so. these are - I don't recognise all of them, but this one's for protection." does she also do tarot? like, asked what was happening and what to do, and the cards said knight of cups/swords (sam), knight of wands/king of cups (dean) and king of swords (cas), two of wands (earned sucess, partnership)/eight of swords (patience)/hierophant (faith, spiritual consolation); inverted justice (priest), inverted devil (angel), inverted moon (fear, highly charged emotions), ace of swords (misuse of power, destruction, injustice).

*

the one where cas has been watching humans for long enough to get bored of sex because seriously there are only so many configurations guys, and he knows what to do kthx (even if dean doesn't)

*

the incredibly fanservice-y 200th ep followup to Changing Channels one where they end up in Glee (dean is a finn/puck hybrid, sam is sort of artie, and cas is sort of kurt; mr singer leads the glee club, and coach crowley is always trying to ruin it; principle shurley's life is very hard), GoT (sam is a horse lord and jess is his tiny bride; dean winchester is summoned to court to be hand of the king to his old friend castiel, and finds that his queen, meg, is up to no good) and possibly something that's like Modern Family b/c I can't think of another recognisable TV show (in which case bobby and jody are trying to raise jody's kid, sam and jess have like five children and no control over their lives, and dean and cas have just adopted a baby)

*

charlie finds them a case in a gay bar, where an incubus/succubus has been snacking on the clientele. she despairs over their attire and amuses herself listening to them (well, dean) arrange 'protection' for each other. she also introduces them to the barman, donally (who's also part-owner with his husband, oliver), who's genial and blue-eyed and shameless and would be played by john barrowman


	26. AU - Dragonriders of Pern

The Winchesters are Holdless, have been ever since the fire that took their cothold at Lemos and John took his boys south. Survival skills, they have them. But then Sam left and hitched a lift on a fishing vessel to go to Harper Hall; he has, as Dean's always said, as much singing ability as a watchwher, but he loves the Archives and has a good memory for precedents, and he almost made Journeyman, before Dean came to get him again. They travel around with a good, feisty runner called Imp and a sturdy old cartbeast called Kaz to pull their wagon. They've a fair of about half-a-dozen lizards (three greens (Acee, Decee and Talica), a blue (Jovi) and two browns (Styx and Lepp)) that look to both of them equally, and things are going well as they criss-cross Pern doing odd-jobs and dealing with pest problems, until they get caught out in Fall one day in the north and are saved by blue Novath and his rider C'stiel. 

Shit happens - another band of Holdless crazies led by Lilith takes something of a disklike to them, Cas's involvement with them costs him his wing when they get caught out in the open one too many times (Southern doesn't have the tradition of Thread shelters the north does, and in any case they're visiting the reeeeally remote places), Sam falls in with the disgraced Healer Ruby and gets addicted to 'dragon's blood', and the dragonless man Lucifer takes far too close an interest in him and almost kidnaps him while Dean's off at the Weyr with Cas after Sam and Dean had a giant blow-out argument - but they get by. (Sam's psychic abilities translate into being able to talk to dragons as long as they're okay with it, like young Robinton)

*

"We can't be far, I can smell salt," Sam says, and Dean nods, pushing up in the stirrups to squint at the road ahead. It's shimmering a little in the heat, dusty and pale, and he's thinking about nudging Imp ahead a bit to see when there's that clap of displaced air and a blue dragon appears ahead and to their left, wheeling lazily above them.

Imp stops so suddenly Dean almost crushes his balls against the front of the saddle, throwing her head up and snorting at the air. You'd think she'd be sharding used to it by now, but no; she's tensed up like a wher in front of a dragon, frozen still and refusing to move. The lizards erupt into the air around them and she flinches like they're attacking her, breaking her trance to dance helplessly across the track as the whole fair goes swirling up to greet dragon and rider, caroling their welcome.

"Imp! Shards girl, it's just Cas!" Dean says, trying to keep his irritation out of his voice. Her ears swivel back towards him, then flick away again and he sighs and sits tight, glancing back at Sam, who's halted Kaz and is shading his eyes to watch Novath descend.

Imp shuffles herself round to watch, not letting the dragon out of her sight, and Dean keeps her on a tight rein but lets her, then coaxes her around in a full circle so she can get over it. With the wind blowing at them, she won't catch the scent, and with nothing to see either she'll settle down soon enough.

Once Imp's facing the right way again he twists in the saddle just in time to see Cas stripping off his heavy riding jacket as he comes up to greet Sam.

"Hey Cas."

"Sam."

"We're looking for the beach, how far away are we?"

Cas's mouth quirks. "It's just over the ridge," he says, pointing ahead to the slight incline of the road. 

That's still too far for Dean's liking. "Great," he calls, "can you give us a boost?"

"Certainly," Cas says, and Novath shakes out his wings. The rustle makes Imp jerk, but then Novath spreads them wide and _roars_ and both Imp and the usually-stoic Kaz take off like Thread is behind them.

Dean usually loves it when Imp goes all out, but this time she's terrified and all he can do is hang on as she goes barreling down the road and soars over the ridge and onto sand, fighting to get her feet under her again but hampered by the softness. She flounders desperately another dragonlength or so before Dean can get through to her, by which time Sam, Kaz and the wagon have also come crashing and jolting down to the beach.

"Ow," Sam says succinctly, climbing down to soothe a panting Kaz, who's staring wildly at the sea like it might try and attack her too. He unhitches the wagon while he's there, and free of it Kaz stumbles a few more paces, then seems to realise that she's safe and stills, shuffling in the sand and lowering her head warily to sniff it. Imp is still trembling finely under Dean's hands, so he strips off her tack and spends a few minutes talking softly to her until she calms, going to tuck herself against Kaz for comfort.

Cas has the sense to bring Novath in over the sea, so when the blue drops him at the water's edge Imp and Kaz have already been persuaded up to the ridge, where there's some scanty grass and the shade of the wagon to rest in. They both flinch when Novath dives into the water, but they dismiss it pretty quickly and return to grazing, though they stick close together.

"I gotta say, think Novath's got the right idea," Dean says when Cas is within hearing distance, and the dragonrider grins. Dean and Sam are both sweaty and panting from hauling the wagon up to the ridgeline from halfway down the beach, not to mention the general heat of the day.

"He says the water's lovely," Cas reports, and falls into step with them as they head for the sea, which is glittering blue-green and inviting. Shyness is not a Weyrbred trait and Sam and Dean never learned Hold propriety, so their clothes are discarded in a heap and they race each other into the waves, Sam throwing himself in bodily and laughing at the splutters of the other two.

Swimming is something Sam and Dean learned as children in hot summers like this one, John beside them challenging them to catch him as he ducked underwater and darted away; by unspoken agreement they swim out to Novath, who eels his way to meet them, gliding underwater with his eyes shining just under the surface and tail churning up a frothy wake. He comes up under Cas and Cas laughs and lets him, clinging to his wet hide with all four limbs. There are, Dean notices while trying not to, yellowing bruise marks on his hips, pink scratches down his back, and a scatter of pale red bites at the junction of shoulder and neck. He looks away.

Sam, the bastard, has no such modesty. "I guess Novath won, huh?" he calls, and Cas blinks at him for a second then glances down at himself and flushes, smirk curving his mouth.

"Yes, he did."

Dean pulls Sam under by the ankle before he can ask anything more.


	27. AU - Temeraire!verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for my kink bingo square "lacerations", because never let it be said that I am ever in a fandom in which I do not write either a daemon or dragon-riding AU (or in this case, both, one twice for good measure)

Dean is on his way back to the house when he hears it; a clap and flutter like some large bolt of cloth catching the wind, and the ear-aching, heart-twisting keen of an animal in pain, growing louder as he listens. He turns to try and locate the source of the noise, and even as he watches a dragon comes plunging out of the sky, limbs clawing frantically at the air, and crashes into the high field.

For a second Dean is torn - the dragons they see here are all for Dover, and they pass swiftly overhead and are gone in seconds. People say they’re dangerous, that they’ll eat anyone that gets close enough save their Captains, and surely an animal in pain would be more dangerous still...but he can’t just leave it there. The Aerial Corps are what keep England safe from the French, and Dean would be remiss if he didn’t try and offer aid where it was needed in turn.

He still wishes he had the gun though.

He finds the beast crumpled in the field, all the sheep huddled at the further end and working themselves into a frenzy, each trying to be the furthest away from this monster thrown into their midst. Dean understands the feeling. There’s a gouge in the earth when the creature skidded as it landed, and if it was injured before it will surely be worse now.

He skirts carefully around it and can’t hold in his gasp. It is indeed hurt - great clawed slashes across it’s flanks and belly, one wing hanging in ribbons so there's no wonder it was unable to control its descent. Its hide is pale grey, though whether that's natural or from shock Dean doesn’t know, and the colour only shows up the blood more clearly. Its chest is heaving from exertion, but though Dean listens he can’t hear any blood bubbling into its lungs, so that at least is some small relief. 

He’s just debating whether he should try and rouse it when he catches movement, something stirring on its back, and for a terrified moment he thinks perhaps some enemy combatant was still locked in battle with it as it fell and is just now regaining enough sense to try and finish the job, when his brain catches up with his eyes and he realises it can only be the poor creature’s captain, probably knocked silly by the fall. Aviator green flickers in and out of view, and then with a groan there’s the sound of the man slithering down the opposite flank and hitting the ground.

“Conesta? Conesta!” His voice is rough with what’s probably shock, and he comes hurrying around to the beast’s head, kneeling heedless in the mud and stroking the scaled cheeks. “Come on girl, wake up.” The dragon’s head shifts towards him, whimpering, eyes still half-closed, and he closes his eyes, shoulders loosening with relief. The dragon makes another sound, guttural and pained, and he soothes it, stroking its nose and pulling its head into his lap. “I’m here, I’m here. You did so well dearest, you’ve been so brave.”

Dean clears his throat, and the aviator startles, eyes snapping open. “Do you uh, want any help there? I’m- we’ve got medical supplies, for the animals, what do you-?”

The man sags further, half-slumping over the dragon’s neck. “Bandages, thank you. And some water to clean the wounds.”

“Of course,” Dean says, and is off running for the barn. He thinks he hears the aviator start to say something else, but whatever it is is lost as he leaves them behind. It can wait until he returns.

They don’t have anything designed for dragons, and the cows and sheep so rarely need doctoring beyond the superficial, so the best Dean can do is bring everything they have and hope that combined it will be enough. If not, he supposes they could always sacrifice a horse blanket or two.

He ends up needing the wheelbarrow to carry everything, and by the time he gets back the dragon’s tail is lashing at the ground, muscles twitching and shuddering in pain, and its head is rolling in its Captain’s lap as it cries. He’s doing his best to reassure it, speaking low and calm and comforting, but his voice breaks a little every time it whines and its eyes are wide open and glassy, unseeing and uncomprehending. Dean remembers Imp when she had colic, thrashing about in her stall and resisting every attempt to calm her down enough to get close enough to get her up until his father had fought his way to her head to bridle her, taking a hoof to the skull in the process.

“I’m sorry, I can’t leave her,” the aviator calls apologetically when he sees Dean, one had spread under the dragon’s jaw. “You’ll have to do it yourself.”

Dean balks. Sure, he’s cleaned out nasty gashes on sheep’s legs, sharp stones from Imp’s hooves, scrapes and shallow cuts on various animals too stupid to know any better, but a dragon? A dragon at least twice the size of any prize bull Dean’s seen at market, with injures deliberately inflicted by an enemy and too far gone to know he’s trying to help? 

“Please,” the aviator says, sky-blue eyes fixed on him, wide and a little glazed themselves, his voice almost giving out, and Dean can only nod.

It’s both similar to the things he’s done before and nothing at all alike; the blood has at least begun to congeal, but it’s mixed with mud from the field and God knows what was on the other dragon’s claws. The very scale of the wounds is daunting too; it must have been a much larger dragon that inflicted them, from the width of them alone, and Dean has to push away images of giant claws raking through flesh. He concentrates only on each task at hand as it presents itself - he cleans the length of the wound in front of him, presses down clods of bandage to help with the clotting, and tries to ignore the clawed foreleg hanging mere inches from his head and shuddering occasionally with the dragon’s pain. He is at least tall enough to reach the injuries higher up on the beast’s flanks without climbing all over her, which he is sure has saved further aggravation and discomfort. She settles as he works, although he is certain it’s more to do with her captain finally getting through to her than any great healing power on his part.

Finally he’s done, and he steps away and throws the bloody water out over the hillside, where it stains the grass briefly brown. “I don’t think there’s any way to properly secure the bandages,” he calls, and the aviator waves a hand, composure restored along with his beast’s.

“If she doesn’t move it won’t be a problem. Could we trouble you further for one of your sheep? I can pay.”

Dean winces inwardly. Bad enough that a dragon crash-landed in their field and scared the shit out of their sheep, and now they have to lose one of the flock? (And where the dragon eats one it will probably eat more.) His father looms up in his mind’s eye, arms folded and telling him to refuse. But his father isn’t here.

“Uh, yeah, sure. If you can pay.”

“Not at present,” the aviator says, spreading his hands to indicate his lack of anything but the clothes on his back, “but as soon as we return to Dover I will see you reimbursed.”

“Alright. Will she eat it uh, live or-?”

The aviator shakes his head apologetically. “Ah, no, not in her current state.”

“Great,” Dean mutters, too low to hear, and goes to single out one of the sheep.

*

The dragon rouses at the scent of bloody fresh meat and devours everything within her reach, hooves, fleece and all. At least she’s not wasteful.

“Thank you, so much,” the aviator tells him as they watch her curl her head round onto her foreleg and close her eyes. 

“’S not a problem,” Dean says, not quite truthfully but honestly enough. “The Corps do enough for us.”

The aviator smiles briefly at him, reaching up to run a hand through his already-disheveled hair, and Dean starts at the jagged tear across his shoulder and the dark stain down one sleeve of his coat. “You’re hurt!”

“Oh,” the aviator says vaguely, staring down at the bloody sleeve himself. “Yes, so it would seem.” He reaches for his necktie, unfastening it with nimble fingers, and takes one end in his teeth, looping the other a couple of times around his arm and drawing it tight, then tying it neatly off.

“You should probably let me look at that inside,” Dean tells him, taking up the wheelbarrow again and turning to lead the way to the house. The aviator hesitates, but follows.

“Where exactly are we?” he asks as he catches Dean up, and Dean grins. 

“Hythe. You’re not far off Dover, just a little too far west. I’m Dean, by the way, Dean Winchester. My father owns the farm.”

“Castiel St Claire, on Conesta. We’re very grateful to you, Dean Winchester.”

Dean halts. He’d thought the lilt and slur in the man’s voice was from exhaustion, worry, exertion, but the way he pronounces his name...an unpleasant feeling crawls up his spine. “You’re- are you _French_?”

“Half,” St Claire says slowly, stopped a pace or so behind him. “My mother finds English names boring.”

Dean narrows his eyes at him. They’re about the same height and roughly the same build, but St Claire’s injury would probably allow Dean the upper hand in a fight. “How the fuck did they let you into the Corps?”

St Claire spreads his hands. “Because my father requested it. As a third son I’m not in line to inherit much and the Church holds no appeal for me.”

“So you chose to go into the _Corps_?”

A slight shrug. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”

“Yes, but you’re fighting against-”

“My parents married long before Bonaparte came to power,” St Claire says sharply. “I am as English as you. I was born here, this is my home. Now, if you will kindly provide me with writing materials I will inform the covert of our situation and we will shortly cease to trespass on your hospitality any longer.”

“Don’t be stupid, the post won’t go ‘til tomorrow by now. I’m not gonna make you sleep in the barn or anything. I was just...” Dean looks away from that bright, unwavering stare. “C’mon, we should check on that wound.”

He hears St Claire snort, but he follows when Dean starts walking again.

*

“So, how do you come to be here by yourself?” St Claire asks, as Dean sets the bowl of steaming water down on the table. “If I may be so bold as to ask.”

“My parents are visiting my brother up in London; he’s at Oxford,” Dean says, fighting the urge to bristle at the mocking quality to St Claire’s tone. He has every right to be annoyed at Dean’s accusations of treachery; after all, he came to his nationality by no fault of his own. Not all of Dean’s suspicions are yet assuaged, however; the French are untrustworthy bastards. “Can I ask what happened to you?” he adds boldly, as St Claire shucks his coat and makeshift tourniquet, wincing.

“We were pursued,” St Claire answers cagily, unbuttoning his shirt down to his breastbone. He shrugs out of the torn sleeve, hissing, and peels the scarlet-stained material away, baring his shoulder and upper arm and the dark crimson gash bisecting both. “Oh, it's not as bad as I feared.” He gropes for the cloth Dean put in the water, wrings it out one-handed and begins cleaning the dried blood from his skin. “We managed to evade the Chanson-de-Guerre, but the two Honneur-d’Or’s caught us off the coast.”

“Our coast?” Dean asks, lifting his eyes from the exposed skin, and St Claire glances briefly at him, eyes glittering in the firelight. 

“No, theirs, fortunately. They harried us all the way back across though, and though we lost them it cost Conesta all her remaining strength.” His mouth twists with worry. “If we hadn’t landed in your field, and if you hadn’t been so generous with your supplies and skills-”

“Oh, I’m not-” Dean starts, ducking his head, and St Claire huffs, then draws a harsher breath as he begins to work at the dried blood crusted at the edges of the wound. “What does it mean, Conesta?” Dean asks, to distract him. “Sam - that’s my brother - he’s the Latin scholar in the family.”

“Grace,” St Claire replies absently, dipping the cloth back in the now reddish water and dabbing carefully at his wound. “Honour. Respectability. It’s the only thing I had ever thought to name my dragon, were I ever fortunate enough to have one.”

“How come you didn’t get one of the big ones?” Dean asks, watching him drop the cloth back into the water and offering him the towel he’d liberated from the linen cupboard. His mother can hardly fault him for it; it’s one of the old ones, worn thin from use, and bloodstains will hardly detract from its appearance. “I mean, being a gentleman’s son and all.”

St Claire’s mouth quirks. “Are you suggesting she is somehow inferior to them? No, it’s fine,” he adds, over Dean’s protests, “you’re not the first to have said it. Though in my opinion she is, of course, quite the finest creature anyone could possibly wish for. And we are every bit as useful as the larger beasts, in our own way.”

Dean considers this. Conesta is small and, assuming grey is her natural colour, well camouflaged in the cloudy skies. St Claire can speak French fluently, like a native. And they were attacked, “caught”, off the French coast. “You’re a spy. You were spying on them.”

St Claire look at him sharply, but says merely: “I'd be grateful if you could come and assist me with these bandages.”

Dean stands and comes to hold the pad against the wound, fingertips brushing against warm skin. “Come here, I’ll do it,” he offers, taking the bandages from St Claire and looping them underneath his arm and across his shoulder and then down around his upper arm.

“Thank you, Dean,” St Claire says quietly, and Dean sets the rest of the bandages back on the table and steps back to allow him the space to re-dress. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” he blurts, “about the French thing, Captain St Claire, I just, I wasn’t-”

“It’s already forgotten,” St Claire assures him seriously, looking up to make sure he catches Dean’s eyes. “You are hardly the first person I’ve met to have made such assumptions, though you have been one of the fastest to apologise for them.” He smiles slightly. “And call me Castiel, we are neither of us standing on ceremony.”

“Castiel,” Dean repeats, hearing it come out rounder, fuller than the French elision Castiel puts on it, three syllables and not two. 

“I believe it's an angelic name,” Castiel continues, plucking sadly at his torn and bloodied sleeve and then shrugging his good shoulder and reaching for the rest of his buttons. “My mother is very devout. My older brothers, of course, got the more recognizable ones.”

“Gabriel and...Raphael?” Dean guesses, and Castiel laughs. 

“Gabriel and Michael,” he corrects, sliding his good arm free of his shirt. “Michael is the elder but chose to go to the Church, where I’m told he does much good; Gabriel has taken up the mantle of layabout heir in his stead.”

Dean chuckles. “And yet _you_ chose to fight for your country.”

Castiel’s good shoulder lifts and falls again, and Dean can see all the muscles that contribute to the movement shifting under the skin. “I’ve never been much for the idle life.”

“Are you, um-” Dean stops, clears his throat, tries again. “Do you want me to fetch you a spare shirt?” 

“Oh,” Castiel says, blinking like his nudity is not a thing of concern to him. “Yes, alright. Thank you. I've said that so often today it feels like perhaps the words will shortly lose all meaning.”

“Yes, perhaps they will,” Dean agrees, not even entirely sure what he’s agreeing with, and hastily removes himself upstairs.

*

Dean is, at least, a proficient enough cook not to embarrass himself in front of a gentleman’s son, and after supper is eaten and Dean has checked that all the animals are well bedded down for the night they sit in surprisingly companionable silence, Castiel repairing the slashes in his coat and shirt with supplies pilfered by Dean from his mother’s sewing box, and Dean alternately reading a book and engaging him in conversation whenever he feels he has let the quiet linger too long, or his eyes have inadvertently strayed to the firelight gilding Castiel’s hair or lighting the line of his jaw.

Castiel gets Sam’s room for the night, the bed fortunately already made up, and Dean finds that sleep eludes him in favour of replaying the events of the day, and wonders whether Castiel has the same troubles. He must eventually slip into dreaming though, because he wakes to low, plaintive calls from outside that are not quite a name.

“Cas,” comes the cry again, desolate and lost, and from across the hall Dean hears the door creak open, the floorboards groan, the stairs rattle, and then shortly thereafter a second voice, too quiet to make out the words. 

Curiosity overcoming him, Dean swings out of bed and goes to the window, and finds that Conesta has somehow dragged herself up from the field to the house, bandages trailing behind her and trampled hopelessly into the mud, and is currently burrowing her head into Castiel’s chest like any dog with a returned master. Dean has for years known how to open the window without it making noise - the better not to alert his parents to his nighttime excursions to the village - and he cracks it open now in time to hear Castiel soothing her like a frightened child.

“There now dearest, I’m here,” he is saying, almost too soft to make out, “I’m here. I’m sorry, I should have come to you before bed, I should have made sure that you were alright, that you knew I was nearby-”

“I missed you,” Conesta says, drawing away enough to speak. “It hurts.”

“I know,” Castiel says, sounding rather wretched and stroking her cheeks, and she butts her snout into his good shoulder affectionately.

“It’s better now. Did I wake you?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Castiel reassures her, despite the evidence of his sleep-rough voice and mussed hair, and she rustles her good wing.

“Stay with me?”

Castiel hesitates. It’s not warm enough to comfortably sleep outside anymore at this time of year, but Dean can imagine him considering and immediately dismissing the idea of taking Dean’s family’s linen outside. “Of course. Let me just go and get my coat and I’ll be back.”

Dean meets him at the top of the stairs, making Castiel start halfway up. "I'm sorry Dean, did we wake you?"

Dean waves a dismissive hand. "Nah, 's fine. I was just gonna- I'd let you have the barn, but the horses..."

"It's no trouble, she's used to sleeping outside," Castiel says, sounding vaguely weary. "Dragons aren't afforded the same luxury as farm animals, with four walls and straw to lie on when sleeping outside becomes inadvisable."

"Even when they're hurt?" Dean asks, shocked, and Castiel's good shoulder shifts, indicating the dismissive attitude of those in charge. "That's- I can probably put the horses out for the night, it's not that cold-"

"Don't risk your family's livestock just for us, Dean," Castiel says firmly. "We'll be fine, we've managed before. Dragons are tough beats."

"There are horse blankets," Dean insists. "That's why I- you need something to cover you, in this weather. There's probably enough we can even make Conesta a...couch," (he almost said "nest") "to lie on. That's gotta be better than the ground."

Castiel considers him for a moment, like he suspects Dean's still trying to inconvenience his own animals for the sake of Castiel's, then he smiles a little. "That's very kind of you, Dean. Thank you."

"It's the least we can do for the Corps," Dean says easily, starting down the stairs. "And for an injured beast, even if she is the size of the barn."

"She is no such thing," Castiel objects, humour in his voice, and Dean grins over his shoulder at him.

"Well she looks it to me. The only other dragons I've seen are up in the sky."

"Any of them would almost certainly be several times her size," Castiel says as Dean opens the door, and Dean can't help his shiver. It's not fear, exactly, just the idea of the sheer _scale_ of such creatures. Bigger than houses, he's heard some dragons are; which means their teeth and claws...

"Here, you must come and meet her properly," Castiel says, taking his arm and interrupting his wild thoughts. Conesta is already watching them, head tilted curiously to one side. "Conesta, this is Dean. He was the one who treated you in the field. You should thank him."

"Dean," the dragon repeats, like she's committing it to memory, leaning forward so her snout almost touches his chest, like proximity adds to her sincerity. "Thank you for looking after me. And Cas." She draws away to yawn then, giving Dean an unfortunately clear view of all her sharp, curving teeth, and blinks at them like a child too late out of bed.

"Stay awake a little longer, dearest, and we'll make a bed for you," Castiel tells her, and she makes an agreeable sort of noise and resettles herself where she's sort of slumped on the ground. Dean winces at the sight of the bandages he can see left behind her like a trail of breadcrumbs, muddied and useless and meaning she's pressing her only newly-closed wounds into the ground with every movement.

*

balthazar and his middle weight(?) grey copper would have turned up to convey cas and conesta back to dover, and then later dean would have wheedled his father into letting him accompany their next tithe of cows to the covert and gone to find cas again, and then they would've eventually got into a relationship complete with cas dirty-talking in french that i had totally looked up ahead of time. ah well

PS I really don't know why every original name in this fic begins with C but there we go.


	28. queering SPN

Bobby/Rufus, taking a surprisingly wicked delight in making Dean's eyes go wide and horrified 

The Winchesters find out because with Rufus visiting they offer to go find a motel or sleep on the couch or something cause Bobby's only got two spare rooms "and I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kinda too big now to bunk up together" 

and Bobby looks awkward and pissed and resigned, clears his throat and resettles his cap, then says "No, it's alright, you can both have your own beds" 

Dean frowns but it's Sam who asks, already halfway suspicious, "So...where's Rufus sleeping?" 

and Bobby avoids their eyes, scratches his head and adjusts his hat again, then looks right at them and says "He's in with me."

"What?" Bobby demands once, and Dean makes strangled noises and waves frantic, backpeddling hands. "Foxholes, you know how it goes." 

"Y-yeah, b-but..." and Sam looks kind of awkward and scratches at his sideburns. 

"Uh." 

"You too?" Dean hisses, looking somewhere between stunned, betrayed and lost, and Sam shrugs. 

"I was soulless? It's only just now, when Bobby said- I got some, uh. Flashes." 

"Jesus, it's a regular ol' pride parade in here," Dean mutters, stabbing mullishly at his food, ears bright pink. 

"Is this going to be a problem?" Rufus asks, steely, leaning over the back of the chair, and Dean starts to shake his head. 

"No, jesus-"

"Cause it's not as uncommon as you seem to think it is," Rufus continues, still glaring at him. "You boys knew Ellen Harvelle, god rest her - you think she was a nun after her Bill died? And poor Jasper was cut up something terrible after Jo died; he was still going by Yasmin then, and Jo was his rock as he figured it all out. He damn near fell apart without her." 

[Garth phones for Reasons and ends up crying about his ex to Bobby, who can't quite bring himself to just hang up until Rufus intervenes]  
"Ugh, gimme that, Bob. Garth, you still cryin' into your Cheerios over Eddie? Yeah? Then stop your pansy-ass mopin', go out there and get him back." 

[and maybe something about Dean, who is obviously repressing his Cas feelings like hell, and how he got started on that particular emotional coping mechanism]  
"Dean..." Bobby starts awkwardly, "son, what John said after that baseball game-" and Dean's shoulders hunch. 

"Don't, Bobby. I'm- I'm happy for you, okay, but this is not turning into the rainbow connection."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a giant soft spot for Bobby/Rufus being gruff old hunters together and never letting each other get too bogged down in the horror of the job
> 
> also Ellen was probably going to have dated Annie, the lady hunter from S7 who died within the first five minutes but spent most of the episode teaming up with ghost!Bobby to help with the case - and who it was revealed had slept with Bobby and both Winchesters, sigh. Her arrangement with Ellen would've been semi-permanent (ie always had an expiration date) but they spent a good few years and a significant chunk of Jo's life happy, and parted on good terms.
> 
> (I also suspect I named Garth's boyfriend Eddie after the possum twins in Ice Age, which he reminds me of /o\\)


	29. post S6 AU - hybrid human/angel baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this fic is my baby. It has been in my head for 3 fucking years, and I have vowed to write it out so many times, but as always my ambition is larger by far than my ability. Nevertheless, I love it too much to leave it unpublished, even if it is just scraps and bare bones.
> 
> And so, I give you - the Emmy 'verse

cas turns up in the middle of the night, and presses something small and glowing into dean's chest, eyes and mouth shining weirdly - dean thinks it's a dream, a mix of death resouling sam, cas having saved him from hell and cas going nuts.

*

“Did either of you have a weird dream about Cas last night?” Dean asks as he wanders in the kitchen. Bobby snorts but doesn’t even bother looking up from his paper, and Sam scrunches his face into faux-disgust.

“Dude, what did we tell you about keeping the happy dreams to yourself?” he says, which means war because _Dean_ was the one who said that to _Sam_ when he was twelve and way too eager to overshare.

“I said Cas, not Kate Moss,” he shoots back, and Sam looks offended but drops it.

“Why’re you askin’?” Bobby says, finally peering over the top of the paper, and Dean shrugs and turns around while he waits for the toast.

“Well you know, Cas can dreamwalk or whatever, thought maybe he might’ve showed up for another round of ‘lick my boots, puny ants’, but if it was just me then...”

“It was definitely just you,” Sam says, sounding faintly amused again, and Dean flips him off.

“What was weird about it?” Bobby asks, just as the toast pops, and Dean shrugs one shoulder as he reaches for the peanut butter.

“I dunno, I don’t really remember it, I just know he was there. I think we were here though, that’s why I asked. Normally if I’m here and not fishing or something it means he was really here and not just poking round in my head.”

“How many times has he turned up?” Sam asks, now looking concerned, and Dean waves his toast hand at him, mouth full.

“Nah, I mean like, generally. Anna turned up once in another dream, but she just wanted to talk. I was in a strip club and-”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam interrupts wryly, and Dean grins at him, half-chewed toast between his teeth.

“Well none of the wards were broken or we’d know about it,” Bobby says, scratching vaguely at the back of his head where his cap itches. “Think it was just a dream, son.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, finishing off the toast in two crunching bites, “guess it was.”

*

bobby has some news about weird gas explosions/etc. something something alphas. on the drive, sam hums ‘stairway to heaven’ even though it’s not on

*

“Wow,” Dean says, surveying the smoking crater with interest. “He’s really going for it, huh.”

“I always thought God striking people down with lightning bolts was a myth,” Sam says, a touch awed. “Well, they’re not people, but.”

“No,” Dean agrees. “Thing is though, why doesn’t he just kill everything, do our job for us?”

Sam shrugs. “Maybe he thinks we need something to keep us busy? I mean, he knows we’d be after him if we had any good ideas.”

Dean makes a non-committal noise. Not because he doesn’t want to pop Cas like an overblown balloon, but because the guy is actually being kind of useful for once. Okay yeah, the miraculous drought-ending and sudden and smitey death of a bunch of crazy religious groups was good too, but this is something for _them_.

“Might also just be trying to get back at Crowley,” Dean offers, and Sam blinks at him.

“Oh, yeah, the alpha thing.”

“Yeah, the alpha thing. You were _there_ , you know.”

“Yeah, but _I_ wasn’t there.”

Dean snorts but drops it. Sometimes that distinction is a little hard to remember, when his memory has Sam and his giant shoulders and his dumb girl-hair right there with him, even if he did hold himself all wrong.

“Hmm,” Sam says, and turns back to the car.

*

sam’s being weird about the washing machine/tv/them / spacing out while they do normal household stuff. dean figures it’s part of his recovery to act a little stoned every now and then

*

Dean wakes because there’s someone right next to his bed. Cas is the only one with such creepy tendencies, and he’s still trying to figure out whether he should be pissed off or terrified when he realizes that it’s not Cas at all.

“ _Sam_?” he slurs, pushing himself up, and Sam makes a quiet little sobbing noise Dean remembers from when he was little and had nightmares and folds himself down to bury his head in Dean’s shoulder. “Uh. Sammy, Sammy hey, what is it, are you hurt?” He prises Sam away enough to look at him in the dark, pushing impatiently at the curtains behind him with one hand until they part enough to let him see Sam’s white face and the tear tracks. “Jesus Sam, what-?”

“Bad dream,” Sam says thickly, hand still curled into a fist around Dean’s t-shirt sleeve. “...Sorry.”

“No, hey,” Dean says, folding him back in because the kid looks like he’s- well, like he’s seen a ghost. “Just- shit must’ve been _bad_ to get you like this, dude.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, muffled, and doesn’t let go.

*

“So, that’s three alphas down,” Bobby says slowly, fingers drumming over the picture of the latest ‘freak gas explosion’. “You _sure_ Cas wasn’t tryin’a tell you something the other night?”

“What? No,” Dean says dismissively, leaning round the door again to check on Sam. He’s curled on the couch reading one of Bobby’s indeterminate law books and seems happy enough. “No, it was just a dream, Bobby. I was just...thinking about him or something, it’s not like that’s hard to believe when he’s on the news every five minutes curing cancer or whatever.”

“Sure,” Bobby says, neutral. “And what’s with the jack-in-the-box routine?”

“Sam turned up in my room last night after a bad dream.” Bobby raises his eyebrows. “Oh c’mon Bobby, the kid hasn’t been scared of crap since he was like ten.”

“Well I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s kind of a lot of crap to be scared of right now.”

“We faced down the _Apocalypse_ , Bobby, he’s not gettin’ night-terrors over Cas being God!”

“Okay,” Bobby says, folding his arms and leaning back against the counter, “so what _has_ he got to be scared of?”

“ _I don’t know_!” Dean snaps, throwing his arms helplessly wide. 

“Y’don’t? How about,” and Bobby lowers his voice like Sam might hear, “all the Hell memories he’s assimilating in there? How about everything he remembers about two _archangels_ using him as a chew toy? How about all that time _Lucifer_ was _living inside his head_?”

“He doesn’t...he said he doesn’t remember any of that! He said all the heavy lifting was done while he was out cold down in the panic room! He said he’s coping with it fine!”

“Well, clearly, he was lyin’.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_ , Bobby, are you sure? What- how do you-? But he said... How am I-?”

“Guess you’ll have to stop stutterin’ and go ask him, son.”

*

“what, no dean i’m fine” sam says when dean asks, “just...weird dreams while my brains sorts through everything, i guess. sorry if i scared you” “nah, it‘s fine” dean says, and doesn’t mention angels at all. shortly after that the alpha things stop, and they’re back to regular ol’ hunts; everything eve made has to be put down, and all the other monsters that came crawling out the woodwork in anticipation of a coup that never came besides. another motel, and dean wakes to find sam on his laptop. “can’t sleep” he explains, fingers jittering at the plastic, “thought i’d do some extra research” and dean considers him then grunts and rolls back over. kid’s an adult and hey, if he wants to be productive...

dean burns his mouth on coffee in the morning and pie in the evening. sam looks amused and impressed that he can burn his burns. dean tells him to shut up, his mouth is fine, they heal fast, it was probably just little scorched

something something sam wonders off, and doesn’t seem to get dean’s anger when he comes back. “but, you said-” “what the hell sam, i did not!” “yes, you-” “sam, i did not tell you wonder off like some child distracted by cotton candy, okay? now get in the car” “sure dean, whatever you say”

dean manages to kick in a locked door in one blow. “hey, what can i say, eat your veggies sammy and one day you too could...grow up...more...to be this awesome. spinach, man, it’s all in the spinach.” “dean, you don’t even know what spinach looks like” “sure i do. it...comes in cans, and it’s...green and... mushy...”

dean starts having weird dreams, people talking in a fog, invisible and not quite intelligible. he finally manages to wake before sam though, and finds a smudge of red on his sheets, sam’s injured hand freshly bleeding again. dean wakes him to shout at him about proper wound care, and sam blinks at him groggily during the lecture and shuffles off into the bathroom with a dismissive wave

dean injures his ankle/wrist and fuck does it hurt. he ices it and stares glumly at the blooming purple and red bruise, the swelling, and takes two painkillers, sacking out fully dressed on top of the covers. when he wakes he feels pretty terrible, but the drugs and ice have done their jobs; the bruising’s faded to blue and the swelling’s down, must only be a sprain

dean comes back from getting take out or something to find sam laughing at the tv. relieved, dean kicks the door to make sam let him in, and sam turns it off and comes to open the door. later, dean flicks it on out of boredom and is greeted by a blast of static

sometimes sam's hallucinations are lucifer or other demons, vesseled or raw, popping up tell him it's not real. sometimes it's dreams he thinks he wakes up from but doesn't, where everyone he loves dies or where everything is different and his current life is the dream, or where the apocalypse happened and he's alone on earth with no one for company, just the bodies and the decay. sometimes it's flashes of the cage or demonic things breaking though like this is all a mirage, dean with black eyes or chains clinking everytime he tries to move his legs. the creepiest though are when dean says something funny and he laughs - only to find dean's in the other room, or watching tv, or just hasn't actually said anything at all. slowly though, with the help of the internet and a therapist who doesn't ask questions (someone who was in sioux falls when the zombie thing happened and knows that there are more things in heaven and earth, etc) and dean and bobby, he works through them.

*

“-ean! C’mon man, don’t do this. Not now. Dean!”

“Jesus Sammy, chill out,” Dean manages, and somewhere above him Sam makes a hiccuping noise and balls his hand into a fist right over Dean’s heart, tugging at his shirt. “’M fine.”

“No, you were- I thought I heard-” Sam swallows and Dean forces his eyes open. The light’s too bright and Sam isn’t really in focus, but he’s _there_ and that’s good enough. “Dean, move your fingers.”

Dean does. It makes his bones ache, sends pain screeching up his arms, but his fingers wriggle against the concrete floor. “See? I’m fine, Sam.”

Sam’s face resolves, scrunched with worry. He shakes his head. “Dean, I could’ve sworn...I thought you _broke your neck_. I _heard_ it-”

Dean rolls his head sideways just to prove he can, squinting up at him. “Uh, no? Just got one hell of a lump on the back of my head. Ow.” Sam helps him up and he leans into him unashamedly. “What you _heard_ was my head hitting the wall, which, by the way, hurts like a motherfucker. But seriously dude, I’m fine. Well okay, I’m not _fine_ , but I’m definitely not dead. Or crippled. And to prove it, I’m gonna walk out to the car, and _you’re_ gonna help me because everything’s still a little bit...lurchy. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Sam says, still a little doubtful, and Dean almost rolls his eyes but thinks better of it when it makes his head throb.

*

that incident is too much though. sam knows what he saw, what he heard, and something is wrong with dean. he relays everything to bobby, who is also concerned, and they return to his.

then crowley turns up - he's been hiding out in the bowels of hell, with the things that were around before gods and angels - and he takes one look at dean and goes all wide-eyed and sucks in a breath through his teeth. "that's not good"

"what?"

"...you don't _know_?"

"Know _what_?" the winchesters snap together, and crowley turns to bobby with a smile.

"don't you just love it when they do that."

one soulenoscopy later, he reveals that dean's got grace inside him, wrapped up in his soul like mistletoe on oak and suckling away to boot. everyone is disturbed. dean insists it must be cas's, some weird fucked-up parasitic thing, and crowley says no, it's not cas's - he knows the feel of cas's grace, and this ain't it. this is much cleaner, rawer, purer - grace at it's most unadulterated, like new. dean freaks out again. "you mean i've got a freakin' angel baby growin' away in there?!" crowley is pretty sure angels don't work that way, but hey what does he know; lol angel baby indeed. he can't remove it, it's way too embeded, so sorry, you'll just have to live with it until we find another option, or until it bursts out of your chest. one option would, of course, be to yell at cas about it, but no one wants the wrath of god down on their heads.

time passes. dean starts feeling kind of beat up, drained, and bobby tells sam that sounds like how he felt when cas soul-sucked him. they're maybe running out of time. dean, feeling particularly crappy but unable to sleep, curses cas out in a whisper and gets graced with his presence. next thing he knows, they're not at bobby's anymore - yet another warehouse probably, and dean continues his tirade until cas gets bored and tells him to STFU. he will, however, answer dean's question - he got sick and tired of the other angels' failure to understand free will even after he invested a lot of time and effort into trying to make them, so he figures they're outmoded and he needs some kind of hybrid, like he was post s5, because it was his spending time with humans that he thinks made him get free will. dean snaps that he could've just gone all holy spirit and knocked up some chick, distasteful though he finds the idea, and cas looks equally unimpressed and says something ike "but dean, you're my favourite, and you're the one who taught me what it means to be human, it had to be you." he ripped out the shreds of his grace, but they were broken and ruined and he needed something to knit them together - voila dean's soul, which he already has a ~profound bond with. he cleansed the grace of all traces of memory and personality that made the angel castiel, leaving only the connection with dean (because he needed it and also it was pretty tightly embedded) and took it down to him. the grace burrowed down deep, relieved to be away from the monster souls and with someone it recognised/loved, and healed itself by siphoning energy from dean's soul. the better it got, the more energy it needed, and also it still requires a certain bloodline as its host, or dean will end up like nick. luckily, it's now big/healed enough to remove and place in its own vessel.

"yeah? and how're you gonna do that?" dean sneers, glancing theatrically round the warehouse, and cas smiles that creepy smile of his. 

"am i not god?" he waves at the big silver bowl nearby and maybe does things with herbs, then slices open his arm and lets the blood flow in (it still needs to be jimmy's bloodline as the vessel). then he turns to dean and starts quoting genesis (or just explains he needs a rib, it's _traditional_ and dean is his ~special chosen one). dean freaks out, begs cas not to do it, runs- and then cas is there looking displeased at his uncooperation and touches his forehead.

dean wakes to an empty warehouse and the sound of a baby crying. he finds her lying in cas’s silver bowl and crawls over and picks her up because she's a freakin' _baby_ , he can't just leave her there, it's not her fault she's some insane hybrid messiah or whatever. he feels completely wiped, shaky and slow, worse then anything from the last few weeks, and the right side of his chest aches but when he checks there's no wound, just the dull pain of something that's no longer there. she settles the moment she's in his arms, staring up at him with bright blue eyes, and dean's read somewhere that all babies' eyes are blue, but jesus. he manages to get over to the wall, a corner, and curls up there, the baby in his arms and wrapped in his jacket, just trying to breathe and absorb that fact that this is basically his kid/clone-thing, flesh of his flesh or whatever. 

he doesn't know how long he's been there before joshua turns up, but it feels like a while. it scares the shit out of him, especially because joshua is looking at the baby like he wants to cry and it takes him a moment to remember who joshua is, and when he says he has a message from god, dean's all "but cas just left, can't he write notes?" 

joshua looks deeply disapproving. "i speak for my _Father_ , the almighty," he intones, and dean struggles to push himself up a little further upright, because holy shit. joshua looks kind of sad, shaking his head. "oh castiel, what have you done?" he looks up at dean, and crouches down to his level. "dean winchester, you understand that now the rebellious of heaven and all the legions of hell will want this child for themselves, either to destroy what they will see as a sacrilege, a profanity, a perversion of our father's creation-"

"hey woah, she's just a _baby_ , what happened to all that crap about kids being innocent and free from original sin?"

"-or to twist and use for their own nefarious purposes." he presses his hand to her head, and she makes a soft noise and closes her eyes. "like her uncle before her, she is destined to be hunted all her life."

he can't soothe the rawness where cas pulled his ex-grace free of dean's soul, but he can numb the loss of the rib and he can zap dean back to bobby's with fresh sigils on his ribs. he sets off all the angel wards and sam and bobby come crashing downstairs to find dean slumped on the couch, the baby held to his chest. after a lot of staring and disbelieving silences and dean explaining when he can get the energy, bobby helps dean down to the panic room while sam follows with the baby, looking kind of pole-axed and almost missing stairs cause he's too busy staring at her. bobby's second act, once they're safely installed, is to go and get jody mills, because it's not like any of them know anything about handling a newborn baby. she doesn't have any of her stuff left, but she knows what to get, and in any case, BABY.

the panic room becomes the nursery, though they can't angel ward it cause she freaks out, so they find a way to seperate the crib/her from the rest of the room for warding purposes [necklace?], and dean apologises to bobby for kind of moving in and bobby tells him to shut up, it's always been his house too. they start seeing random flashes of light and crashes of thunder for no reason, flickers of fire outside that are just patches of scorched earth when they get there, and then one night there's a thud on the roof and when they go up there's a dead angel up there, wings burned onto the tiles. that happens another few times, out in the junkyard or on the porch and, once, one turns up on the hallway floor, far too close to the stairs for comfort. they go over every inch of the house with the books, trying to see which sigil is wrong, and sam joins dean in the panic room, bobby taking up residence in the hall outside and angel-banishing sigils on every wall in the house.

crowley pops up a few hours after dean’s back and eyes the baby like she's got tentacles, lurking in the doorway because of the warding and in case he sets off cas’s heavenly sensors (because it has to be cas killing the angels. they assume there are demons coming after her too, but they never see them. crowley tells them he warned them all they'd never make it, not when the child is a winchester and protected by god himself, but he doubts it did much good. still, they don't seem to be getting as close as the angels, even if dean does dream of azazel/lilith/meg/ruby/sam/the mother feeding the baby blood, or her dying in an explosion of grace, speared by a lucky angel.) sometimes she seems to be distraced, listening to things they can't hear, and sometimes she cries for no reason, soft and whimpering, and nothing will get her quiet.

after some debate, they call her mary ellen winchester, "emmy" for short. sam claims "jo(anna)" for his future hypothetical kids. (also on the list: "anna", “karen”, "deanna" (though dean claims it's creepy and sam was mostly joking. maybe as a middle name though), "madison", "jessica", "pamela", “lisa”)

a couple of months in they talk about maybe leaving, but aside from the difficulty of warding the impala, sam reminds them about the demon in the semi and it doesn't get brought up again. bobby and one of the boys start going round warding the whole property, hoping to stop the angels getting so close. they found the sword that killed balthazar to add to the other two, and all three of them carry them everywhere. the only good thing is that emmy clearly can't get possessed, being an angel and all. crowley assures them that angel swords will work excellently on demons too, being forged in heaven with holy fire.

then crowley turns up with a wounded angel, who they tie to a chair in a circle of holy fire and interrogate. turns out heaven is in complete turmoil - it was bad enough that was cas was claiming to be god, but now he's trying to replace them, and with a blasphemous halfbreed no less, the shit has really hit the fan. a bunch of angels distracted cas while a couple more snuck into the weapons cache cas and balthazar fought so hard to win back from raphael; they now have things that can do some damage. she insults cas a lot - apparently they used to be in the same garrison and she always knew cas would come to a bad end, associating with humans - but she also keeps interrupting herself to snarl about the "abomination" and needing to destroy it, and once they've got everything they think they need dean steps calmly through the fire and stabs her through the throat. "don't talk about my daughter like that, you self-righteous fuck."

then, when emmy's about six months old, it all goes quiet. crowley says something big's going down and for a few days emmy fusses, wide-eyed and restless, and then one day she just starts screaming and won't stop. she won't drink, she isn't hurt, she just clings to dean and sobs until she passes out, exhausted. clearly, something's happened to cas. they all huddle in the panic room, crowley with a pack of hellhounds outside the door (he used to just dislike cas being god; now he says he's grown fond of "the little mite" and they aren't complaining if it means he'll help), convinced that they're about to get deluged by angels and possibly demons without cas to protect them. they don't have to wait long before there the sound of smashing wood and three angels appear at the top of the stairs (..the weapons get them round the wards), but the hellhounds are pretty effective and sam and bobby finish them off once they get close enough. then it's demons, a solid cloud of writhing black smoke, and crowley curses inventively and grabs himself ruby's knife from sam's hand. "you've got the damn sword!" he snaps, and then they're pretty much just hacking and slashing. the hellhounds help, but dean's pretty sure they all die quite early on and then it's just them. he's loathe to leave emmy in her crib alone, but the room's warded to all fuck and the more demons he kills the less likely they are to find a weakness. they do though, sometime later when dean's arms are burning and all the cross-carved rounds are gone (the holy water was tipped over first thing), and there're demons clawing at his chest, trying to get to the protection tattoo so they can break it, and there's a horrible screeching snapping sound as the wall cracks, right through the iron, and the demons and angels pour past them into the room. dean spins round, terrified, throwing himself after them, but then emmy's sitting up and throwing out her arms, light gathering in her palms, and dean just has time to yell "ohfuckshutyoureyes!" before everything goes white.

when he blinks back colour, he finds himself face down on the floor of the panic room, everything eerily silent. he shoves himself up, still seeing spots but fuck it, _emmy_ , and stumbles over to her crib. she blinks back at him, lifts her arms towards him, and he grabs her up and cradles her to him, burying his face in her fine hair. "emmy, sweetheart, jesus you just saved our asses, knew we kept you round for a reason, emmy emmy _emmy_."

sam's got his monkey-arms wrapped around both of them and bobby when there's that whisper of wings and dean's got the sword out faster than he can blink, sam and bobby too, and joshua holds both hands up and stays where he is.

"what do you want?" dean snaps, aware that emmy isn't freaking out so he must be okay, and joshua watches her for a moment before returning his eyes to dean.

"as you may be aware, there has recently been a...change of management. mary ellen," and he pronounces her name carefully, like it's foreign, "is no longer cut off from the glory of heaven, and our father has decreed that she be left alone."

dean stares at him.

"she...she was cut off? like castiel was?" sam asks, and joshua nods. "so what, was she fallen? then how'd she just blast all those demons?"

"she is...unique," joshua says slowly. "castiel no doubt meant to simply rehouse his remoulded grace in a new vessel and leave the child in your care to learn free will as he did, but in making a new life he also created a new human soul, as in all acts of creation. when he added the grace, which had rebuilt itself anchored by dean's soul and had so recently been ripped from that support, it sought this new soul instead."

"so you're saying she, what, took over this baby's body like angels take over their hosts?" dean demands, glancing down at her, and joshua shakes his head.

"no. your soul is strong, made stronger by your time in the pit, and grown as you are; this soul was new and the grace was still fragile and incomplete. they are intertwined, two halves of a whole."

"so she's...half-human half-angel? Like...nephilim?" sam asks, and joshua shakes his head. "the nephilim were born of human mothers, and were merely the result of mating when the angel was in a human vessel. there was no grace involved. regardless, when her grace was cut-off from the host, she was able to assuage that loss by tapping into the energy of her soul. in that regard she is very human, always willing to adapt and change. indeed, she seems content with it, and hasn't reached out to the host once."

dean stares down at her. she stares back, exactly like cas, blue eyes unnaturally serious in her round baby face. he touches a curled finger to her cheek. "wow sweetheart. you're even more special than we thought."

sam clears his throat. "what, uh. what happened to castiel?"

joshua's mouth thins. "eventually, he was bled of the scourge within him and cast from heaven, no longer fit to be a member of the host."

"he..." dean repeats, unable to get the rest of the words out, throat sticking. "he's down _here_? you-"

"in taking in the souls of purgatory he sacrificed his grace to their monstrous hunger, then tore out the remnants and used them to create the...child you are holding. even putting all his crimes aside, he no longer has the grace of the lord within him; he cannot stay in heaven."

dean holds emmy closer, and she curls her hand in his shirt like she knows what they're talking about. hell, it wouldn't surprise him if she did. damn freaky angels. yeah, sure, cas has done some crazy and fucked-up things, he said so himself, back when he was fighting raphael for control of heaven and stopping apocalypse II: electric bogaloo, and never mind the last 18 months, but dean's pretty sure god didn't want heaven run by a douche like raphael and he seemed to like cas, what with the always bringing him back from the dead and all. and what, it was all so cas could go a little nuts juiced up on souls and god could sweep back into heaven and sort shit out and look like he's some kind of saviour?

"where is he?" bobby asks after a moment.

joshua shrugs. "it is no longer our concern."

"so your daddy's back and he's clearing out the trash, right?" dean snaps. "lucky for him we mostly did that for him. what about zachariah, huh? what about raphael? what about his precious michael?"

joshua fixes him with one of those angelic glares. "as you say, their fates have already come to pass. castiel declared himself a false god, and presumed to create the host anew. such violations cannot be tolerated."

"oh, well it's nice to know he can be relied on to stop cas goin' on some crazy powertrip but not the fucking _apocalypse_."

joshua inclines his head. "i do not question the ways of the lord, i merely carry out his wishes."

dean snorts. "yeah, i know, you're just a fucking hammer. so, great, no more angels divebombing us and the big man's back upstairs, good to know. you can go on back to daddy now."

"farewell," joshua says gravely, nodding to them, and vanishes.

crowley got exorcised/destroyed with the rest of the demons so all they can really do is put out an fbi missing person’s thing for cas and wait. bobby and dean fix the panic room but leave all the angel-warding sigils up - angels can be a sneaky bunch, and dean doesn't trust god to be checking up on them. they do spend more time the rest of the house though, the property wards meant to give them early warning. they fend off the odd demon attack, but nothing that requires emmy's grace again. she stops sleeping as much, and starts manifesting things like zapping around and telekinesis with her toys. christmas comes and goes.

sam takes the "cast out" thing to heart though, and one night when he can't sleep because there are barbs on his bed and the distant screams of the damned, he googles meteor activity and finds one over russia around the time cas was kicked out of heaven. the fbi thing hasn't made a peep, so maybe... they end up contacting tamara, because europe's closer than america, and rufus because he knows shit, and turn up a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who emigrated from russia from a hunting family. they have the rough location and a picture of cas from his fake fbi badge (dean keeps the rest of the strip in the impala's glove compartment, despite it being the edge of cas's shoulder, an arm and half a torso, and cas in blurred profile with dean's hand shoving him back in front of the camera. sam doesn't mention it), and after several weeks of grapevine and phonetree work the guy gets back to them with a crappy dark cellphone picture of a bar, cas half-turned towards the photographer with a glass in one hand. they vaguely float the idea of emmy going to get him because they share grace, or just because she'll understand who he is, but without the handprint it's not really viable and if they wait for her to get old enough to understand anything might have happened. they don't have the money for the air fare, and in any case they're pretty sure cas wouldn't come and kidnap is a crime. "never thought i'd say this, but it kinda makes you wish balthazar was still alive, huh?" dean says tiredly, watching emmy burble to the stacking bricks she's making into a messy but surprisingly stable castle.

in the end they manage to cobble together a summoning ritual from the usual angel one and pamela's, using emmy as the thing linked to cas, with missouri telling them skeptically that it could work but she has no damn idea. the only good thing is that he's finally out of the damn suit - he's got a pair of dark jeans and a couple of layered shirts under a thick jacket - warm but not enough for a normal human in russia in winter. he stares at them, eyes wide in what looks like fear, then promptly collapses from the strain on his shredded grace, bleeding from nose and eyes and ears. they clean him up and take him up to dean's room (he's fine sleeping on the couch for a while in the day) and tie him to the bed, drawing sigils all over the walls to keep heaven away and him contained, and a holy oil circle round the bed just in case. they all kind of lurk then and watch cas sleep until they get bored, emmy in dean's arms, unwilling to leave him with this new and mutilated not-really-an-angel-or-a-human there. cas is skinnier, cheekbones standing out; his hair is longer, and curling a little at the ends where he's sweating; a rough beard covers his jaw. he's got smudges like bruises under his eyes, and his lips are chapped worse than ever.

dean snaps awake in the dark when emmy says "da" with an edge he's never heard before, explained when he finds cas awake and staring at her, intense and unblinking as usual. he picks her up, settling her on his hip, arms protectively around her, and says quietly, "cas?"

cas swallows, licks his dry lips. "she's so big now."

"yeah, that's what babies do. grow." cas keeps on staring, and emmy keeps on staring back. figures; they're probably mind-melding or whatever. "her name's mary ellen. we call her emmy."

"i know."

dean sits down, emmy in his lap. cas doesn't make any effort to escape, just lies there, watching her like he can't believe she's real. 

eventually cas looks up at him. "dean-" dean raises his eyebrows. "this is all so-" he shakes his head, takes a deep breath. "i know bobby has alcohol in the house. just a glass, dean, please. this is so much to absorb-"

"no."

cas gets more insistent and then violent after that, and eventually dean tells emmy to go see sam and watches dispassionately as cas throws himself against the ropes until his wrists are bleeding and he's sobbing, messy and raw and so very very human. the next morning they extinguish the circle, bandage cas's wrists, move emmy's cot to sam's room and carry on. weeks (and emmy's birthday (6th may)) pass and he gets worse, raving about how emmy stole his grace and if she'd just come closer he can take it back. she eyes him narrowly and clings to dean, and the next night dean makes her stay with sam and sits grimly by the door, angel blade across his knees, watching cas twist and scream on the bed, sometimes in languages dean doesn't know. a couple nights later emmy zaps in during the raving, cocks her head at cas, then zips to his side and presses a hand to his forehead, and he quiets immediately. she grins over at dean. after that, they start using her whenever cas gets difficult.

he gets better after that, though he does once manage to grab emmy and dean feels his heart stop, is halfway across the room with the sword raised before she snaps something that sounds like "na!" and appears with her arms wrapped around dean's neck. she isn't crying though, and when dean hesitates she pats at the back of his neck and twists her head round and babbles something furiously at cas. dean's willing to bet it's mostly baby talk, but something must get through because cas sinks back onto the bed, curling up on himself as much as he can and shaking with sobs. she watches him for a little while, then vanishes again, and dean checks to hear bobby's gruff "emmy winchester, one day you're gonna give me a heart attack," before he goes carefully back towards the bed, fighting the urge to put a comforting hand on cas's trembling shoulder.

cas never does more than stare at emmy after that, and his health and mood improve. dean stops bringing the sword. one day, he finds emmy sitting by the door, chattering away to cas and waving her favourite stuffed unicorn, and cas turned towards her and listening gravely. he flicks his eyes up to dean and manages a tiny smile. dean finds himself genuinely wanting to answer it with one of his own, but instead he shoos emmy away.

eventually they do untie him though, and after bobby's locked all the alcohol away in some secret safe god-knows-where cas comes downstairs. he apparently learned things like showering and shaving without them, which dean's vaguely grateful for, except for how he'll have to pottytrain emmy soon so he didn't really escape. cas and emmy learn to eat at the same time, and he starts off about as unsteady on his feet, though he sits out on the porch steps or wanders around the junkyard. one day dean wakes from a nap to find cas leading her back through the door, two of his fingers clutched in her little hand. dean is up immediately and scooping her up, but he throws cas a nod and a grunted "thanks."

months pass. emmy learns to walk, then to run. her hair gets long enough to tie up into pigtails, which sam gets remarkably good at. he also has the longest hair, and emmy spends a week playing with it and tying it inexpertly into hairties and getting it hopelessly knotted and full of jelly and god knows what before sam agrees to letting dean cut it for him. emmy is fascinated, but also upset; she sifts the cut hair through her fingers sadly once it's done and dean has to prise it out her fingers. cas gains back some weight; his eyes brighten again and the dark circles disappear from under his eyes. he keeps a light beard though, and it makes him look weirdly hippyish, or maybe just stonerish, given the t-shirts and jeans he wears now. he's still distant though, drifting through the house like a ghost and spending a lot of time outside, apparently just studying the wrecks or sitting on top of them and gazing up at the sky. 

then the demons attack; five of them, in human vessels. one goes after cas when he's outside, and he manages to wrench a door off one of the cars to fend it off. the other four come for emmy. they're good, and three of them have sam, dean and bobby occupied while the other grins at emmy. she stares it down, but it swipes a hand and she goes smacking into the wall, eyes wide. dean dimly hears the other two shout, but mostly he just hears his blood roaring in his ears as he watches the demon advance on emmy where she's pinned helpless. then cas comes barreling through the door, wielding the car door like a crazy person, and catches the demon on the back of the head. it snarls, spinning round, and cas hits it again, knocking it off balance, just as bobby kills his demon and throws the sword at the other one. emmy drops like a stone, but she lands easily on her feet, mouth set and eyes furious, and the other two demons get burned out with extreme prejudice. they all kind of group hug her after that, and dean looks up to find cas staring down at the bodies, and catches his eye, beckoning him over with a flick of his head. he joins them hesitantly, but emmy twists, grabbing a fistful of his t-shirt, and makes it clear she includes him in this family.

he and emmy get closer after that; she starts calling him "cas" (which dean mostly blames on himself but really, what else is she supposed to call him? no sam, shut the fuck up.) and he starts teaching her what sounds like enochian as she learns english. she's a fast learner, probably because the angel in her already knows it or something. as a consequence cas gets closer to sam, bobby and dean again too, and they fall back into the old pattern with remarkable ease - by the time emmy's second christmas comes round they're pretty much back to what used to pass for normal. they don't talk about cas's brief stint as god or the preceding year, and they all pretend they never will. cas, unwilling to read bobby's extensive library of supernatural books both because he dislikes being reminded of his old life/the monster souls and because he doubts he will find anything of value, finds karen's old cookbooks and starts cooking. it's...an adventure, but he follows the instructions to the letter and it's not really _bad_ , just different.

'the old routine' also means that...weirdness between dean and cas, now less complicated by the whole 'oh, he's an angel' thing. cas still stands too close, stares too long and leans into dean when dean teaches him to shoot, and it's worse with emmy, especially when sam catches dean watching cas with her and jokes about telling her she has two daddies. dean tells him to shut the fuck up and shoves him hard enough to unbalance him, but it doesn't stop sam laughing or cas and emmy's scarily identical curious faces.

bobby passes out bottles of beer (and ginger beer for cas) at new year and they knock them together as bobby's arthritic old clock chimes twelve. bobby goes up first, bitching about "gettin' old and needing his beauty sleep - don't even think it, boy." sam chills with dean and cas for a bit, then announces he's going up too and elbows dean in the ribs. cas and dean sit in companionable silence for a while, then cas stirs, says he too is tired, and presses a quick kiss to dean's lips as he gets up. dean is too stunned to do anything other than blink after him.

they're sort of flirting then, dancing around each other, waiting to see who'll crack first. dean takes to lurking in the kitchen, trying to persuade cas to tweak the recipies to make them more winchester-friendly; cas proves remarkably adept at phrasing double entendres in a way that doesn't get picked up by toddlers. they're both stubborn bastards though, and while there might well be more stolen kisses, which gradually get longer and deeper, it's six weeks before dean finally breaks. he's gone out to stargaze with cas, sitting on a rused bonnet with a beer in his hand and emmy being read her bedtime story by sam, and cas says something about venus being bright tonight, the star of lovers, sly grin on his mouth, and dean goes "oh it is, huh? well then" and grabs him by the collar. they're both a little hesitant still, and the making out is pretty lazy, but then cas shifts, rolls over so he's properly on top, and then it gets serious fast. dean mutters something about how it's a fuckin' shame cas can't still zap them indoors, then hauls cas off the car after him. he heads for the house, then sees bobby's study light on and sam on the couch and redirects, tugging cas over to the little outhouse cas saved him from a demon in all those months ago. later, cas appologises for not being able to 'zap' dean around, and dean stares at him then decides they may as well have this conversation now and says sure, he misses it, but if cas did he wouldn't have emmy, and also they might well not have this either, or certianly not the weird domestic thing they have going, which he's actually gotten kind of...used to.

it takes another few weeks before they properly touch on the fact that emmy is cas's child too, and from there, the circumstances of her 'birth' and everything associated. it's not a happy conversation, and there is a lot of shouting and a few days of tense silences which confuse and irritate emmy, but finally they both agree to disagree and they both admit they may have been stupid and then they resume the sex thing.

for emmy's second birthday, sam buys her _and tango makes three_ and dean throws the wrapping paper at him while he cackles, then tries to persuade emmy to smite him. emmy frowns between them, then bobby tells her it's just her da and uncle sam being idjits and distracts her with her other presents. she's intrigued though, and later she makes dean read it to her, sam sniggering from the other end of the couch and cas coming to lean on the kitchen doorjamb with his stripey apron on (dean prefers him clean-shaven). 

"and they all lived happily ever after. the end."

*  
codas:  
\- in which dean and cas move out, because bobby loves them but now they're no longer under imminent threat of doom and emmy's older, they should gtfo and find their own house and their own bed to have sex in. sam moves out too, but he goes to law school and rents a place down there.  
\- in which cas gets a motorbike. it's all sam's fault, but dean likes a challenge and builds one up for cas while he learns to ride a bike. sam resumes his lawyer thing and gets a girlfriend. cas works part-time at the daycare/school to assuage dean's fears of kidnapping (he also demon-wards it to hell his first day) and part-time at the local library, and they acquire a cat.  
\- in which dean's birthday present is cas in biking leathers and sunglasses, courtesy of sam  
\- in which dean and cas get sort-of married cause emmy's registered at school/daycare as 'winchester' so the staff assume, and then sam says they should get rings and cas agrees. dean spends the rest of the day calling him "mrs winchester", until cas pins to the bed and fucks him through the mattress like he's trying to prove something.

emmy is never completely safe though, and mortals have such short, fleeting lives; the angels can wait

*

Dean manoeuvers the Impala into an empty space and cuts the engine, scanning the crowd of kids and parents swarming around the kindergarten car park for any sign of Emmy, maybe waiting for him with another carefully geometric fingerpainting clutched in her hand. Other families stream past the windshield, cheerful little kids’ voices chattering about their day, and he frowns over at the building’s doors, now closed, feeling the first paranoid stirrings of worry.

Hayley’s messy blonde head is visible over by the fence, bending down to say goodbye to a couple of kids, so Dean inches his way out of the car and heads over, telling himself that he’s being an over-protective, paranoid son of a bitch as he goes and still glancing left and right in case Emmy’s there and he’s just missed her.

Hayley’s a sweetheart, the good side of thirty and cute with it, all big green eyes and haphazard hair piled on top of her head. She and Cas get on really well, despite Cas’s complete inability to notice that ninety percent of her comments are flirtatious, and she always has a grin and wink for Dean, who _can_ recognize flirting when he sees it and sees no problem with returning it in kind; it’s not like entire freaking _town_ doesn’t know him and Cas are living together anyway.

“Dean!” she says brightly when she sees him, straightening up and smiling at him. “You made it!”

And that sets off alarm bells right there.

“Yeah well, how could I miss being the first one to see her latest artistic masterpiece?” he asks, keeping his tone light, friendly. Hayley seems like one of the least likely people ever to want to do anything to Emmy, not to mention the hundreds of chances she’s had before now and not taken, but if life’s taught him anything it’s that you you just honestly never know.

Hayley grins. “Oh yeah, you’re gonna love it! But when you phoned to say you were gonna be late, Mrs Graham said she’d take Emmy home herself cause she knew Cas’d be busy, so you’ll have to wait to see it ‘til you go pick her up from there.”

Dean fights to keep his face blank. Mrs Graham’s Emmy’s teacher, and people here take each other’s kids home all the time as a favour when their parents are working late, but he and Cas had agreed early on that that was way too risky - all a demon would have to do is possess someone’s mother and say they were gonna take Emmy home, and bam! 

They’ve spent so much time warning Emmy against angels and demons and reminding her to be on the lookout for them at all times that they may have neglected the more usual spiel about how some humans are also just as dangerous, and that even adults you’re meant to trust can be a threat. 

And now it’s come back to bite them in the ass in the worst possible way.

 _Fuck_. 

“Cas, uh, said he left his glasses here yesterday - can I go look for them?” (Cas doesn’t _need_ them, but he learned pretty quickly that the sexy librarian thing is a weakness of Dean’s, so he wears them out to work sometimes because he’s a devious bastard.)

Hayley waves a cheerful hand at the building behind her. “Yeah, sure. I haven’t seen them, but...”

“Thanks,” Dean says, throwing her an absent smile and already halfway to the doors, trying not to look too freaked out.

Emmy’s classroom is exactly the same as it always is; nothing out of place or unusual. There are still blobby paintings on the walls, the little desks and chairs are all neatly lined up and tucked together, and the bookshelf is still a haphazard rainbow of books stacked every which way. There’s no sign of a struggle, no sulphur in the air, and Dean turns a desperate circle, searching for _something_ , _anything_ that links back to demons or even some other monster, because otherwise there’s only one other alternative.

There. The supply closet door isn’t shut.

Dean crosses the room in two strides, hoping desperately that all he finds in there is Emmy maybe out cold or tied up, cause as horrible as it sounds, it’s still better than-

Sigils. Scrawled across all three walls and the floor, in chalk and crayon and paint and even blood; sigils for binding, for subduing, for holding. And there, on the back of the door, the crimson circle that keeps other angels out.

Dean stares at them, eyes flicking helplessly from one to the next, cataloging what they all mean. Most of them are Enochian, but some of them are older; the ones they found in creaking, crackling old books and on sheets of parchment; the ones they could never draw, only found painted on the side of the house in the morning with a scorched patch of earth nearby. The ones only angels know.

Cas. He has to go get Cas. Cas will know what to do.

He turns and runs.

“Dean? Did you find-?” he hears Hayley call after him as he hurtles out the doors, and he yells a thank you over his shoulder because yeah, yeah he did.

He almost hits some chick in a pastel blue minivan on his way out, but fuck her, she got her kid safe in the back, sprawled against the seat with legs too short to reach the floor. He guns the engine the moment he’s out and the Impala thunders forward; normally he’d be exhilarated but right now he’s just glad to be moving. The library should be pretty empty this time of day, with the older kids still in school and the nerds still in class or at work, so he’ll be able to just get in, grab Cas and go. Fuck Bobby for going out to help with that fucking suspected werewolf pack on the other side of the state, and fuck Sam for being in freaking _Wyoming_ doing his stupid fucking lawyer exchange program or whatever.

Then he pulls up in front of the library, and everything goes to hell.

Three police cars are parked outside, lights strobing, and someone’s being loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher, oxygen mask over their face. Dean takes a breath and feels like something’s wrapped itself tight around his chest. 

_”...cause she knew Cas’d be busy...”_

They’ve got Cas. 

Someone taps on his window, and he blinks Sheriff Mills into focus, the band around his lungs easing a little.

“Dean. You need to see this.”

The electronic doors are stuck on open, twitching feebly inwards like they’re trying to close and can’t. Inside, the place is a wreck; book shelves tipped over, books and pages everywhere, the computers at the big desk smoking and cracked open like eggs, spilling circuit boards and wires onto the surface.

“What the-?”

“Come here,” Sheriff Mills says tersely, her hand on his shoulder so tight the fingers are gonna leave bruises, and leads him over to the store room, where the door has been blown clear out of its frame and inside some dude is crouched taking photo after photo and another guy is leaning in close to scrutinise the wall because on it, smeared in blood, is half of the banishing sigil. Beneath it are three bloody fingerprints, semi-circled like the hand was splayed flat to the wall, like someone flattened themselves against it in a last, hopeless attempt to get away.

“And these,” Sheriff Mills says quietly, moving Dean a little to the right, and what the guy is photographing is Cas’s stupid fake glasses, smashed and twisted on the floor.

Dean can feels his lungs expanding but it doesn’t feel like any air is getting in; everything else has faded out and all he can see is Cas’s glasses, lit up by the camera flash, and the _click-snap_ of it is all he can hear. He feels numb, helpless, like he’s back with the grass under his knees and every nerve throbbing staring at the ground that just swallowed his brother. The angels have got Emmy; after everything God said, after everything Cas lost and Sam and Dean and Bobby gave, she’s gone. And Cas- Cas is probably already dead. It’s not like they have any reason to want him alive.

“Dean. _Dean_.” Sheriff Mills is shaking him, voice low and commanding. The forensics guys are looking at him funny, obviously wandering why he’s there. “Come on.”

She walks him out and he goes with her on autopilot, too busy imagining holy fire and Emmy’s wide wide eyes; Cas’s eyes open and staring and ruined wings burned into the floor.

“Listen, I’ll take care of it,” she says once they get outside and back to the Impala, away from the other cops and the curious onlookers, gathered to gossip and gawk. Dean kind of wants to aim the Impala at them and put his foot down. “Do you want me to call Bobby?”

“...What?”

“Do you want me to call Bobby?” she says patiently, and Dean nods jerkily, then takes a second to think and shakes his head.

“No, I’ll do it.”

“You sure?” she asks, and Dean nods, feeling a little less like one of those fucking idiotic bobblehead dolls this time. No, he definitely needs to do the calling.

“Thanks,” he adds belatedly, and she raises her eyebrows. “For taking care of it.”

She waves an impatient hand. “It’s not like the actual story’s any less crazy than whatever bullshit I’ll come up with, is it? And when things get that surreal, why not tweak it a bit?”

*

Dean calls from the road, probably breaking about five laws given the speed he’s going at the time. 

“Sam, it’s me, you gotta get your ass back home, now. The angels have got Emmy, and Cas is gone with everything smashed to shit, and I just- I need you back here, okay? Like, now.”

“Bobby, you gotta haul ass back here, okay? Everything’s gone to shi- the angels have got Emmy, okay? And Cas, but I don’t- you just gotta get back here, okay?”

He hesitates, then dials Sam again.

“And listen, okay, I’m summoning Joshua, it’s the only way we’ll know- he can do that angel-locating thing and figure out where they are. I’m sorry, but I can’t wait, Emmy might- you know what they think of her. So uh, if I’m not there when you get back, get Josh on the line. And _make sure she’s safe_ , okay Sammy? That’s all I ask. If I’m not- you _have_ to get her back.”

*

The smoke makes his eyes sting and his tongue prickle, but as soon as the last syllable dies away Joshua is _there_ , looking his usual serene and implacable self. Dean really, _really_ wants to punch him in the face.

“Dean Winchester,” Joshua says gravely. “You could’ve just called.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean shrugs and flicks the new match, dropping it to the ground in the same motion. The holy oil flares. “Wasn’t sure you’d answer.”

Joshua goes very still. “What's the meaning of this?”

Dean raises his eyebrows, strolling closer. “Oh, so we’re playing innocent. Okay, fine.”

Joshua stares back at him, face blank, flames burnishing his skin with crimson shadows.

“When I went to pick Emmy up from kindergarten today, she wasn’t there,” Dean says finally, pacing the perimeter a hair’s breadth away from the fire. “What _was_ there was a closet full of powerful sigils, sigils for binding and subduing angels. Then I went to get Cas, and you know what I found? Everything in ruins, and half a banishing sigil drawn out on the wall.” 

Joshua blinks at him. 

“I thought you said God told all of you to leave Emmy the fuck alone.”

“So it was decreed,” Joshua agrees carefully.

Dean hears his voice drop even lower, a snarl. “So where the _fuck_ is my daughter?”

Joshua looks him straight in the eye. “I cannot tell you while you insist on keeping me trapped like an animal in a cage.”

“Well maybe you should try harder.” Dean leans over the flames, ignoring the way the heat of them burns at his face, his throat, his chest, and drops the next match. The next concentric circle lights up, smaller than the first, and Joshua sucks in a startled breath.

“Dean, holy fire negates an angel’s power. You know this.”

“I know some of your sick brothers have kidnapped my daughter and are planning to do fuck-knows-what to her as we speak,” Dean says evenly. “And I know they’ve probably already killed Cas.”

Joshua’s face hardens. “Whether the heretic Castiel lives or dies is of no concern to us.”

“No, I know,” Dean says softly, “but it is to me. And if he _is_ dead, it will _definitely_ be your concern.” Another match arcs through the air; another circle catches. 

Joshua glances down at the fire that now crackles a foot or so away from him on all sides. “I cannot say this is making me particularly inclined towards helping you.”

Dean bares his teeth. “Yeah well, whatcha you gonna do?”

Joshua watches him for a few more moments, then closes his eyes.

“They’re well-protected; they don’t wish to be found, and I cannot do so with any degree of accuracy while you keep me imprisoned here.” He opens his eyes, meeting Dean’s calmly.

Dean grits his teeth. “Listen to me, you son of a bitch-”

“You can’t force me to do what I cannot.”

Dean glares at him, but Joshua just stares back, impassive and patient. Finally, Dean breaks the deadlock and kicks up the earth, sending clods of it spraying over the line of flames and breaking them, one by one. The moment the last circle snaps Joshua is gone.

“YOU’S BETTER FUCKING COME BACK, YOU FEATHERY FUCKING BASTARD!” Dean yells after him, and then all he can do is wait, leaning back against the Impala and nursing his blooded knuckles from punching the nearest tree.

He falls into some kind of stupor, mind replaying over and over again all the things the angels could be doing to Emmy, to Cas. Both of them are still susceptible to holy oil, and to angel swords, but beyond that there’s just the sheer _number_ of things that a bunch of crazed angels could visit upon an almost-human and a five year old child, one of which they despise for trying to rule them and then to replace them, and the other of which they see as a violation of every natural law. He remembers Zachariah, trying to get him to say yes to Michael and casually removing Sam’s lungs; remembers how exhausted Cas was from losing even a little grace, or from banishing himself across the country with barely any grace left to sustain him.

Night has fallen by the time Joshua reappears, making the leaves on the surrounding trees rustle. 

“Where the fuck are they?” Dean growls, pushing himself off the Impala, and Joshua meets him halfway, jaw set and eyes furious.

“They’re in an abandoned house on the edge of town, which they’ve covered with ancient, impenetrable wards. They truly don’t wish to be found.”

“Or interrupted,” Dean finishes, furious, and Joshua holds up a hand.

“They don’t wish to be found because they know what they’re doing is wrong, that it goes against God’s wishes. As such they have warded the building so strongly that, short of the Almighty Himself, no denizen of Heaven can enter.”

“Then He should get His holy fucking ass down here!” Dean explodes. “It’s His fucking law they’re breaking, they’re His kids, He should sort it out!” 

Joshua narrows his eyes at him and folds his arms, looking like he’s liking Dean less and less as the evening goes on. Like Dean gives a fuck. 

“...And fuck that, what about me? Can I get in?” he adds after a period of frosty silence, and Joshua’s mouth curves, small and mean and kind of triumphant.

“You they cannot ward against, Dean Winchester.” His hand comes up, and the next second they’re outside some abandoned house, covered in ivy and half falling down. It looks completely ordinary to Dean, who was expecting to see the same glowing blue designs he saw on that house where Alastair was holding the Reapers hostage - and then he remembers he wasn’t exactly in his body at the time.

There’s a flurry of movement, and Dean ducks out the way just as a rush of silver goes shimmering past. Apparently the angels set a watch for just this eventuality. Good to know. The angel spins and comes for him again, face creepily blank, but Joshua snaps his fingers and the angel freezes where he stands, sword dropping from his hand. 

Joshua smiles that satisfied little smile again and puts a hand on the angel’s head, and light starts spilling from his eyes. Dean closes his eyes and turns away, an arm over his face but the brilliant flare washing over him even so, and when he turns back the angel’s vessel is crumpled on the ground.

“He dead?”

“He is back in Heaven, to face judgment,” Joshua says peaceably. “You should take his sword, I think, to help you break the wards.”

“Don’t think that’s what I’ll be using it for,” Dean says coldly, picking it up. It’s cool and smooth to the touch. “If there’s any chance I can get to them before you guys do, don’t expect there to be anything left.” Joshua says something, but Dean isn’t listening anymore. “Don’t wait up,” he adds, over his shoulder, and kicks the door down.

Dust swirls up to meet him, thick and grey and choking, and Dean swipes it away from his nose and mouth with a sleeve and goes on down the corridor. It’s not a big house, they must be around somewhere close by. The place smells like mold and decay, musty and depressing, and the only light is coming from behind him, throwing everything into shadow on top of the darkness.

There’s a rush of air behind him, and that’s all the warning he gets before an arm clamps down across his throat. He stabs backwards and feels the blade catch, hears the angel hiss in pain, and then fingers snap around his wrist and wrench it back the wrong way. The sword clatters to the floor and Dean does his best to stifle his shout, but _Christ_ that hurts. Something warm drips down his wrist and down over his palm, and the weird new sensation just above the heel of his hand tells him the bone’s come through the skin.

The darkness blurs around him and then the angel’s dragging him down some stairs, lit by a flickering amber glow from the open door at the bottom. Fire. Holy fire. He blinks, trying to clear his vision as the angel manhandles him inside, and then he wishes he hadn’t as what he sees sucker-punches him right in the chest.

Emmy is standing in the corner of the room, the fire circle around her only just big enough for her to stand in, her hands bound behind her and another length of rope looped around her head as a gag. She’s staring at him with those huge blue eyes, flames reflected horribly in their depths, a cut on her forehead bleeding sluggishly and the skin around it dark and bruised. Other than that she looks okay though, and Dean feels a tiny bloom of relief in his chest.

“Dean Winchester,” says a familiar voice from his other side, and Dean turns and feels something lodge in his throat, metallic and choking.

Cas in hanging on the wall above three more angels, the silver swords through his hands and feet glimmering in the firelight. There are crimson tracks over his skin and down the wall, but worse than that is the faint glow around the wounds, the last remnants of his grace bleeding away.

“You sick fucking psychos,” Dean snarls, and fights against his captor as much as he can, trying to ignore the waves of agony crackling up his arm. It’s like trying to escape a brick wall. “That has _got_ to be fucking blasphemy.”

“He declared himself a false god,” the same angel says, eerily, insanely calm. Though it’s wearing Mrs Graham, it’s obvious she isn’t home right now. “Precedent says that this is the punishment to fit such a crime. He has chosen to live amongst humans, so by human rules shall he die.”

“He didn’t choose, your fucking God kicked him out!” (Keep them talking, keep them talking and away from his family.)

The angels all stiffen and stare at him like he’s some kind of cockroach. “He is no longer fit for the Host,” says a different one, hands balled into fists. “His grace is gone, unnaturally ripped from him to create that _abomination_ ,” it flicks its head at Emmy, and Dean decides right there that that one’s gonna die first, “and what little remains is in tatters, and tainted by the unholy souls he consumed. He declared himself our god and tried to teach us his own sinful ways, the ways _you_ , Dean Winchester, taught him. When we resisted, he planned to _replace_ us with blasphemous filth. He was no longer worthy of the lowest ranks of Heaven; the very Glory of the Lord was desecrated by his presence.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah yeah, heard it all before. This huge, epic hate-on you guys have for him is kind of hilarious, actually. And whatever way you cut it, I’m pretty sure your Daddy ain’t gonna like being reminded of His kid’s death. _Especially_ when you’ve already broken one of His new rules.”

“It does indeed sully us to be even in the presence of such an abhorrence,” the third angel says softly, “but its disposal will ease the whole Host of Heaven, and the last remnant of the Blasphemer’s dominion will be gone as if it had never been.”

“ _If you lay a_ finger _on her-_ ”

“You will do what, Dean Winchester?” not-Mrs-Graham says flatly, zapping over next to Emmy, and Dean twists desperately against the angel holding him, until his vision starts to go bright around the edges and he gags from the pain. The angels watch dispassionately, looking faintly disgusted.

Dean spits the last of the bile from his mouth and lifts his head again. “I’ll kill you.”

She looks amused - or at least, her mouth curls. “Will you.” A sweep of her hand has Dean finally zooming free and slamming into the wall, the smack of his wrist against it making everything go to static for a moment. When he fights back to consciousness it’s to find he can’t move anything except his eyes; even his ribcage is stuck. He gasps in a few shallow breaths, and slants his eyes down to look at Emmy, who’s staring back at him.

The handprint on his shoulder prickles. It’s nothing, the lightest feather-brush, but it tickles down his arm and he twitches a finger against the rough brick of the wall. It sends flares of agony needling back up, but he can move. He flicks his eyes away from Emmy’s in case the angels notice anything, and across the room he finds Cas looking back at him, eyes barely open but showing a sliver of blue.

Something slick and cool catches at his fingertip. Blood. Great, now he has to fight against bloodloss too, fuckin’ peachy.

Below him, the angels are debating what to do now - whether they finish Cas off, or let him see Emmy die first, and at what point they kill Dean. _Hey, you utter fucking dick_ , Dean prays silently, _now would be a real good time to come busting on in here with a legion or two of actual righteous angels_. Naturally, his prayer goes unanswered. Another drop of blood glides down his finger.

Wait. _Blood_. 

_God helps those who help themselves_ , a voice that sounds remarkably like Cas’s says in his head, and Dean drags his finger out sideways.

*

The angel that used to be in charge of Dean steps forward, hand raised, and Emmy doesn’t move, staring fearlessly up at him with furious eyes, daring him to try it. 

The angel wearing Mrs Graham is still watching Dean, but from where she’s standing the angle of his body hides both the small movements of his finger and the clenching of his arm to coax out a little more blood. He keeps his eyes on the floor, doing everything by touch and hoping like hell he’s right, only half-faking the fluttering of his eyelids and the hitches in his breathing as the pain in his arm comes and goes and the need to draw a proper deep breath becomes more and more persistent.

“Don’t...touch her.”

It’s barely more than a gasp, a wheeze of breath, but all the angels turn to stare at Cas, who’s chest is heaving as he stares them down, a terrible rattling to every inhale.

It’s all the time Dean needs. He twists his head round to check the sigil, joins up the two wandering ends of the circle and corrects one of the symbols, then spits, “Have fun motherfuckers,” and smacks his hand down onto the world’s smallest banishing sigil.

The angels all disappear in a flash of light, and Dean drops like a freaking stone, instinctively twisting to land on his uninjured shoulder. Even so, the impact jars his whole body and he hears himself groan, but there’s no _time_ for that, he has to get up, has to get Emmy free. He struggles up onto his knees and kind of knee-walks his way over, little neon spots dancing across his eyes as he sucks in air, then, figuring that there’s no time for anything better, pushes himself to his feet with his good arm, grits his teeth and stamps down on the flames.

Emmy makes a stifled sound and yeah, it hurts like _fuck_ , but she can heal him if this all works out and the important thing is that the circle is broken. The ropes snap off her like ribbons and the cut on her forehead, as well as the abrasions left by the rope at the corners of her mouth, vanish. 

“Go!” Dean shouts at her, down in a sort of half-crouch because his leg won’t support him any more, cause otherwise he knows she’ll stick around to heal him and while that would be amazing the angels could be back any second, but all she does is throw herself at him.

“Da!” The warmth of her little body seems to spread all through him, and the next second the searing pain in his leg and the stabbing pains in his arm are gone. Dean would love nothing more than to wrap his arms around her and hold her forever, but they have bigger things to worry about.

“Emmy!” he snaps, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Angels!”

“They’re already gone,” she says, pulling away so she can speak but leaving one hand fisted tight in his shirt, and he closes his eyes, relief making his limbs numb. She lets him go, already twisting round. “Cas,” she says and he nods, unable to speak.

Cas’s head is lolling like a puppet’s, and every breath he takes sounds like a struggle and chokes off into a gasp. “It’s okay Cas, we’ve got you,” Dean tells him, yanking at the sword impaling his foot, but all that does is make Cas wheeze harder, almost a whimper, and in the end it’s Emmy who gets them out, lifted up on Dean’s shoulders to get the ones in his hands too. 

Dean’s braced to take his weight but it’s still a shock and he barely manages to turn it into a controlled collapse, Cas in his arms with his head fallen sideways onto Dean’s shoulder. 

“Cas, hey, Cas, it’s okay buddy, we’ve got you, you’re safe, it’s okay,” he repeats, over and over, as Cas shudders and spasms in his arms, gulping in air like a drowning man, his hand clenching in Dean’s shirt. “ _Emmy_.” 

She presses three fingers to Cas’s temple and he shivers to a stop, head rolling to one side and hand falling away, leaving a bloody smudge on Dean’s shirt. The wounds in his hands and feet close up but don’t disappear entirely, leaving round pink scars behind. “They were angel swords,” Emmy explains, lower lip trembling a little, eyes wide. “But Da, I don’t know how to- his _grace_ -”

“Hey, sweetheart no, it’s okay, it’s not your fault,” Dean tells her, lifting an arm away from Cas to pull her into his side. “You healed him, right? So he’ll be fine. I mean, he’ll probably be asleep for a while, but then he’ll be fine, okay? I promise.”

Emmy chews her lip, fingers curling over Dean’s collar at the back of his neck. “Okay.”

The cold, hard floor under Dean is suddenly soft and plush, and he leans gratefully back into the couch cushions, feeling Emmy slide down a little so she’s curled next to him, head against his chest. “Thanks baby.” She hums acknowledgment and reaches up to lay a gentle hand over Cas’s heart. 

After a moment, Dean draws his arm out from under Cas’s head with a groan. “Damn Cas, you need to lay off the burgers,” he murmurs, shaking the pins and needles out, and Emmy zaps away so he can slide carefully along the couch and off, leaving Cas there. He goes to join Emmy in the armchair and they sit there in the quiet and listen to Cas breathe, smooth and even.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Dean asks after a few minutes, and Emmy makes a quiet little noise.

“Mrs Graham said you called to say you’d be late, so I should go home with her. She was human then, and she’s my teacher, so I thought it was okay. She dismissed everyone else early cause it was Friday, and then she said we’d go if I helped her clean up. She told me there was stuff to wipe the board with in the supply closet, but when I opened the door she _shoved_ me inside and it was _full_ of sigils, Da, and some of them were older than Enochian, _ancient_ magic, and I couldn’t-,” she swallows, burrowing her head into his side. “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t come home, I couldn’t do _anything_.” Her voice quavers, muffled against his shirt, and Dean tightens his arm around her. She’s never been rendered so powerless before, it must’ve been kind of a shock.

“Hey sweetheart, you’re safe now.”

“I know.” She blinks up at him, eyes so like Cas’s, and Dean lowers his head to press a kiss to her soft, soft hair. “I felt Corabael descend to Earth, and then she pulled me out of the closet and took me to that basement and lit the holy fire.”

“You know their names?” Dean asks, and she frowns up at him with that little scrunched line at the top her nose, just like Cas.

“Of course, they’re my kin.”

“Who else was there?” It’s not like it changes anything, but he’d feel better about knowing names, distinctions to mark them out from the rest of the Heavenly flock.

“Bardiel was waiting in the basement, and Hantiel and Lamach brought Cas in. Venibbeth was the one sent outside to wait for you.”

“What happened to them, after they got banished?”

“Joshua,” Emmy says succinctly, looking up at him. “He waited, after you came in. He has great faith in you, Da.”

“He doesn’t act like it,” Dean mutters, and Emmy smiles.

“He always has. He told you, when you visited him.”

“Yeah, but that was the Apocalypse, and I figured he just said that to soften the blow of telling us God didn’t give two craps. And how do you know anyway, that was three years before you were even born!”

“Because I do,” Emmy says enigmatically, and Dean rolls his eyes. Even when it’s his own kid, angels don’t give straight answers.

*

bobby and sam get there a few hours later, and cas wakes up in the middle of the night and scares the shit out of dean when he wakes up and finds cas staring at him and emmy (who's sleeping in with dean because there's no way he's letting her out of his sight tonight) from the doorway. cas is fine though, bar his new scars ("add them to the collection" dean tells him fondly, kissing one palm, and cas's fingers curl up against his cheek), and that is the last time anything of that nature happens.

*

Dean Winchester is not what Bethany was expecting.

(”Tell me about Dean,” she’d said to Sam a good few months into their relationship, tired of only hearing about his family via the odd funny anecdote; he’s cagey about his life up ‘til now, and she doesn’t exactly want his whole life story, but a few details would be nice. So far, all she knows is that Dean loves his car, its tape deck and the tapes of Zeppelin and Metallica and other loud guitar music, that he has a particularly robust sense of humour, and that he lives with the ‘Cas’ it’d taken her far too long to realise was actually male, and their daughter Mary Ellen, who everyone calls Emmy.

Sam had looked kind of hunted, and um-d and ah-d a lot, but had eventually elaborated that Dean was shorter than him and worked as a mechanic. Asking the apparently innocent question of how they’d come to have Emmy had made Sam look even shiftier and say carefully that she was Dean’s biological child, but he’d had been weirdly evasive about any further questions so she’d eventually given up.

From all this she’d kind of assumed he’d be a slightly coarser version of Sam, in ripped jeans and a well-loved t-shirt with hair maybe long enough to tie up and a battered old tape player never far away, bandana in his back pocket and a twinkle in his eye.

She was wrong.)

The man who opens the front door doesn’t seem to have much of a resemblance to Sam at first; his face is round where Sam’s is long, his hair lighter and his eyes greener, stubble gold on his jaw where Sam’s would be darker, but he hugs Sam tight and calls him “Sammy” with obvious affection, and there’s something familiar about his smile when Sam introduces her and he offers her a grin. 

“Bethany,” he says brightly, “we’ve been hearing about you for forever, it’s about damn time Sam brought you round.”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam mutters, and then a little girl appears from nowhere and flings herself at Sam’s knees, trilling his name.

“Hey munchkin!” Sam says, sweeping her up so she can get her arms round his neck and kiss him on the cheek. “Emmy, this is Bethany.”

“Bethany,” the girl repeats, turning in his arms and smiling at her. “Hi Bethany.” She’s got bright blue eyes and a button nose scattered with freckles, and what looks like Sam’s hair but much longer, falling in gentle waves just past her shoulders. Her smile is exactly like her father’s.

“Hi,” Bethany says, returning her smile and raising a hand in a wave. “Can I call you Emmy?”

The girl cocks her head, like this is a weird thing to be asked. “Of course.”

“Okay then, hi Emmy,” Bethany says, and Emmy giggles.

“Come on through, Bobby and Cas are in back,” Dean says, standing back to let them in, and closing the door after them. “Cas is doing the barbeque; I told him it was meant to be done shirtless while drinking a beer, but he wouldn’t listen.” Sam snickers.

Bobby, Bethany knows, is kind of their adopted father, especially since their actual father died a good few years ago. He’s pretty much exactly what she expected, down to the trucker hat and beard; he pulls Sam into a brief hug, Emmy scampering away across the grass, and nods politely to Bethany when Sam introduces her, quirking a smile and pronouncing her “the one who’s been keepin’ Sam outta trouble.”

“I do my best,” she answers, smiling back, and Bobby chuckles. Dean smacks Sam in the arm with a grin.

“Drink?”

“Yeah.”

“And you, Bethany?”

“Sam’s having a beer, right? Same for me please.”

“She’s a keeper, Sammy,” Dean stage whispers, winking at her, and Sam rolls his eyes and steers her away from Bobby and towards the grill and the man standing behind it.

“And this is Cas. Cas, Bethany.”

Cas is also a surprise; the way Sam tells it she’d been expecting some kind of uptight, prissy-looking librarian type, probably wearing a shirt with his jeans and maybe even a tie. But Cas is wearing a blue t-shirt and has bare feet; several of his toenails are painted pink and purple. He’s got a serious case of bedhead going on, and his eyes are creepily similar to Emmy’s, blue and intense.

“Bethany,” he says, just like his daughter, and smiles a little, soft and welcoming. His voice is unexpectedly deep, and rough like he’s been slaving over the barbeque and breathing its smoke for hours. “It’s nice to meet you.” He comes round to their side and holds out a hand, but when she takes it he doesn’t shake, just squeezes a little then lets go again. His hands are soft and warm. “Sam’s told us a lot about you.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” she says with a laugh. “As long as it was all good, I don’t mind.”

“Nice pedicure, Cas,” Sam says, looking down at his feet, and Cas’s smile spreads. 

“Emmy wanted to practice painting her nails on someone else, and Dean objected.”

“Yeah, I bet he did,” Sam says, amused, and Cas shrugs with one shoulder. 

“She did also offer to do my fingernails too, but I declined.”

“Yeah, so then she sneak-attacked me and got my thumb,” Dean says, arriving with the beers and flashing a glittering purple thumbnail as he passes them out. “You want anything, Cas?”

“No thank you,” Cas says, returning to the grill and leaning in to examine the burgers.

*  
poor bethany eventually finds out about the supernatural side of things when a group of crazy satanists/lucifer loyalist demons/witches break into their house and sam's reaction is to yell for his niece, who suddenly appears in the hallway and blows them all up. despite this, beth does marry sam, and they have several kids, the oldest of whom is a boy called seth, whose adventures with the adult emmy can be read [here](http://andlightplay.tumblr.com/post/52318552287).

dean grows a beard when emmy’s about five, as an experiment. cas complains and dean tells him to suck it up, but shaves it off again. he lets his stubble get heavier after that though, and eventually cas just stops complaining. he grows his own beard intermittently though, in protest, until he can’t bear it any more cause it itches too much/makes him feel like a hobo/reminds him of his time in russia.

hayley invites cas to yoga one day, and cas asks dean whether it sounds good. dean tells him with a leer that it’ll make him real flexible.

emmy’s first hunt involves dean freaking the fuck out while sam laughs at him and tells him he was exactly the same when he was on his first hunt (except it was worse cause dean was with him?) and cas tries to calm him down. “oh dean c’mon,” sam says finally, cuffing him on the shoulder, “the girl took out a cloud of demons when she was six months old, she’ll be FINE.”

when emmy is about 26, cas is killed in a freak hunting accident, and whatever passes for his soul is either in hell or purgatory. naturally, his daughter is really not into either of those ideas. mostly she’s kicking ass and trying to rescue him (which might involve giving him back some of his grace), but she also meets demon!bela and also maybe crowley.


End file.
